MAN  AND  THE  ATTAINMENT 
OF   IMMORTALITY 


•      MAN 

AND    THE    ATTAINMENT 
OF    IMMORTALITY 


BY 


JAMES  Y.  SIMPSON,  M.A.,  D.Sc.,  F.R.S.E. 

PROFESSOR    OF    NATURAL    SCIENCE 
NEW    COLLEGE,    EDINBURGH 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW    XBT    YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Made  and  Printed  in  Great  Britain. 
T.  and  A.  CONSTABLE  LTD.,  Printers,  Edinburgh. 


TO 

H.  H.  D.  S. 

WHO   MAKES  THE   BEST  EASILY   CREDIBLE 


2022i£8 


'Then,  if  that  is  his  motive,  he  will  not  be  a  statesman. 

'  By  the  dog  of  Egypt,  he  will !  in  the  city  which  is  his  own 
he  certainly  will,  though  in  the  land  of  his  birth  perhaps  not, 
unless  he  have  a  divine  call. 

'  I  understand ;  you  mean  that  he  will  be  a  ruler  in  the  city 
of  which  we  are  the  founders,  and  which  exists  in  idea  only  ; 
for  I  do  not  believe  that  there  is  such  an  one  anywhere  on 
earth  ? 

'  In  heaven,  I  replied,  there  is  laid  up  a  pattern  of  it,  me- 
thinks,  which  he  who  desires  may  behold,  and  beholding,  may 
set  his  own  house  in  order.  But  whether  such  an  one  exists, 
or  ever  will  exist  in  fact,  is  no  matter  ;  for  he  will  live  after  the 
manner  of  that  city,  having  nothing  to  do  with  any  other. 

'  I  think  so,  he  said.' 

PLATO,  Republic,  592  (tr.  Jowett). 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  may  be  considered  as  a  development  of,  or 
sequel  to,  an  earlier  volume  entitled  The  Spiritual  Inter- 
pretation of  Nature.1  Like  the  previous  work  it  contains 
little  for  the  specialist  in  science,  philosophy,  or  theology, 
but  as  an  attempt  to  consider  as  a  whole  certain  of  the 
principal  facts  relating  to  the  past  history,  present  situa- 
tion, and  ultimate  destiny  of  mankind,  it  may  commend 
itself  to  some  of  those  who  feel  the  imperative  need  for 
themselves  of  a  synthetic  view  of  the  world  process,  which 
shall  cover  not  merely  the  story  of  man  but  the  stages 
antecedent  to  his  appearance.  The  mere  scope  of  the 
investigation  must  necessarily  involve  partial  and  incom- 
plete treatment  at  many  points  ;  at  the  best  it  is  no 
more  than  an  endeavour  to  approach  some  outstanding 
questions  in  terms  of  the  dominant  category  of  this 
generation. 

Where  the  writer  is  conscious  of  so  much  indebtedness, 
it  is  difficult  to  make  full  acknowledgment,  but  in 
addition  to  the  references  in  the  footnotes  he  would 
particularly  wish  to  thank  Professors  Sir  Richard  Lodge, 
T.  J.  Jehu,  David  Waterston,  J.  H.  Ashworth,  H.  A.  A. 
Kennedy,  and  H.  R.  Mackintosh,  for  their  kindness 
in  reading  the  chapter  or  chapters  dealing  with  sub- 
jects upon  which  they  are  recognised  authorities,  so 
saving  the  writer  from  some  pitfalls  and  in  addition 
making  positive  suggestions  of  great  value  ;  as  also  Dr. 

1  Third  and  revised  edition  shortly. 

vii 


viii     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

A.  H.  Freeland  Barbour,  who  has  essayed  the  task  of 
reading  the  whole  book,  and  to  whose  wise  counsel  the 
writer  owes  a  life-long  indebtedness.  At  the  same  time, 
this  acknowledgment  does  not  necessarily  imply  their 
agreement  with  the  positions  developed  in  the  book. 

The  thanks  of  the  writer  are  further  due  to  the  follow- 
ing individuals  and  publishing  houses  for  permission  to 
make  use  of  the  illustrations  cited : 

The  Director  of  the  Boston  Public  Library,  U.S.A.  (frontispiece). 
Dr.  A.  Smith  Woodward  and  the  Trustees  of  the  British  Museum 

(figs.  10,  ii,  and  15). 

Mons.  A.  Rutot  (figs.  8,  12,  14,  20,  and  24). 
Messrs.  Oliver  &  Boyd  (figs.  13,  16,  17,  and  18  from  James  Geikie's 

Antiquity  of  Man  in  Europe,  and  figs.  21,  22,  and  23  from  R. 

Munro's    Palaeolithic    Man    and   Terramara    Settlements    in 

Europe) . 
G.  Bell  &  Sons,  Ltd.  (figs.  3,  4,  6,  9,  and  19  from  H.  F.  Osborn's 

Men  of  the  Old  Stone  Age,  and  figs.  25,  26,  and  27  from  J.  M. 

Tyler's  The  New  Stone  Age  in  Northern  Europe}. 
Messrs.  Macmillan  (fig.  i  from  T.  H.  Huxley's  Man's  Place  in 

Nature}. 

The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.  (fig.  2). 
Williams  &  Norgate  (fig.  5  from  Sir  A.  Keith's  The  Antiquity  of 

Man}. 
The  Cambridge  University  Press  (fig.  7  from  R.  A.  S.  Macalister's 

Text-book  of  European  A  rchaeology) . 

Edward  Arnold  (fig.  28  from  Weismann's  Evolution  Theory}. 
Constable  &  Co.  (fig.  29  from  A.  Dendy's  Outlines  of  Evolutionary 

Biology}. 
Swann  Sonnenschein  &  Co.,  Ltd.  (figs.  30,  31,  and  32  from  A. 

Sedgwick's  Student's  Text-book  of  Zoology}. 

The  writer  also  desires  to  thank  the  Directors  of  the 
Religious  Tract  Society  for  permission  to  use  in  the 
Introduction  some  passages  from  a  pamphlet  entitled 
Some  Thoughts  on  the  Relations  between  Science  and 
Religion,  being  one  of  their  series  of  '  Tracts  for  the  Day.' 

J.  Y.  SIMPSON. 

NEW  COLLEGE,  EDINBURGH. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 


INTRODUCTION 


CHAPTER  II 

MAN'S   PLACE   IN   NATURE  .  .  .  .  .27 

CHAPTER   III 

THE  ANTIQUITY  OF   MAN  ......        47 

CHAPTER    IV 

THE  ORIGIN   OF   MAN          .  .  .  .  .  .67 

CHAPTER   V 

PALAEOLITHIC   MAN  ...  QO 

CHAPTER   VI 
PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  (continued)   .  .  .  .  -119 

CHAPTER  VII 

MESOLITHIC  AND   NEOLITHIC   MAN  .  .  .  .      147 

CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  PLACE  AND  FUNCTION  OF  NATIONALITY  .  .  .179 

ix 


x        THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

CHAPTER    IX 

PAGE 

THE  EVOLUTION   OF   INDIVIDUALITY        .  .  .  -197 

CHAPTER   X 
THE  METHOD  OF  EVOLUTION       .  .  .  .  .      2l6 

CHAPTER   XI 

EVOLUTION   AS  THE  WINNING  OF   FREEDOM       .  .  234 

CHAPTER  XII 

GOD  AND  THE  WORLD       ......      263 

CHAPTER   XIII 
THE  SCRIPTURAL  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY  .  .275 

CHAPTER   XIV 

THE   HISTORIC  JESUS   AND  THE  COSMIC  CHRIST  .      302 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Sargent  frieze  from  Boston  Public  Library,  U.S.A.  Frontispiece 

FIG.  PACK 

1.  Skeletons  of  gibbon,   orang,  chimpanzee,  gorilla,  and 

man     .........  33 

2.  The  grasping  power  of  infants    .          .          .          facing  43 

3.  Evolution  of  the  lance-point 55 

4.  Map — Europe  in  the  period  of  maximum  continental 

elevation      ........  5g 

5.  Suggested  genealogical  tree  of  man  and  anthropoid  apes  64 

6.  Evolution  of  the  brain       ......  75 

7.  Types  of  Kentian  eoliths 83 

8.  Restoration  of  Pithecanthropus,  after  Rutot           facing  85 

9.  Discovery  site  of  Heidelberg  jaw         .          .          facing  92 

10.  Side  view  of  skulls  of  Eoanthropus,  Neanderthal  and 

modern  man          .......  94 

11.  Side  view  of  lower  jaw  of  Eoanthropus,  chimpanzee, 

Heidelberg  and  modern  man  .....  97 

12.  Restoration  of  Eoanthropus,  after  Rutot      .          facing  98 

13.  Types  of  coup-de-poing  or  hand-axe  .          .          facing  100 

14.  Restoration  of  Neanderthal  man,  after  Rutot       facing  106 

15.  Front  and  side  views  of  skull  of  Rhodesian  man  facing  109 

1 6.  Types  of  Mousterian  and  Aurignacian  implements 

facing  112 

17.  Succession  of  deposits  in  Cave  of  Sirgenstein        .          .129 

1 8.  Types  of  Solutrean  and  Magdalenian  implements  facing  132 

19.  Engraved  reindeer  on  reindeer  antler,  from  Kesslerloch, 

Switzerland           .         .         ...         .  135 

si 


xii      THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

FIG.  PAGE 

20.  Two  bison  modelled  in  clay,  from  Tuc  d'Audoubert  cave 

facing  137 

21.  Examples  of  Magdalenian  art    .         .         .          facing  138 

22.  Bison  from  Niaux  Cavern,  with  four  arrow  marks          .  141 

23.  Examples  of  Campighian  pottery  and  flint  implements 

facing  152 

24.  Restoration  of  Neolithic  man,  after  Rutot  .          facing  155 

25.  Reconstructed  lake-dwellings     .          .         .          facing  159 

26.  Crouching  burial,  menhir  and  dolmen      *;.*      facing  164 

27.  Map — Migrations  of  peoples       .          .         .         ,          .170 

28.  Volvox  aureus — Type  of  colonial  Protozoan           .'         .  203 

29.  Early  stages  in  development  of  primitive  vertebrate 

facing  205 

30.  Branch  of  typical  Coelenterate  colonial  form        .          .  206 

31.  Dividuality  in  Planarian  worm  .          .          .  :      .   '      .  208 

32.  Dividuality  in  Polychaete  worm          .         .         .          .210 


CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTION 

IT  is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that  the  great 
trends  of  philosophic  thought  have  been  in  some  measure 
a  reflection  of  the  social  and  political  conditions  of  the 
periods  in  which  they  were  dominant.  Thus  those  ages 
in  which  the  sense  of  law  and  order  and  authority  was 
supreme,  were  on  the  whole  characterised  by  ascendancy 
of  the  idea  of  the  unity  of  thought,  while  those  in  which 
the  human  race  took  to  experimenting  with  its  destiny, 
or  breaking  new  ground  in  the  social,  political,  and 
economic  fields,  were  marked  by  systems  of  thought 
whose  leading  conception  was  that  of  multiplicity,  or 
in  some  sense,  pluralism.  That  the  decade  covered  by 
the  Great  War,  the  even  more  significant  movement  of 
the  Russian  Revolution — the  ground  swell  of  which  was 
felt  more  widely  than  that  of  the  war  itself — and  the 
subsequent  phase  of  world-wide  economic  depression, 
and  social  and  political  unrest,  should  have  been  without 
effect  on  contemporaneous  philosophic  thought  is  incon- 
ceivable, although  it  is  still  too  early  to  attempt  an 
estimate.  Of  the  character  of  that  decade,  however,  as 
a  period  of  testing  and  revaluation,  of  discovery  and 
readjustment,  there  can  be  no  question.  No  feature 
stood  out  in  greater  relief  throughout  these  days  than 
the  scrap-heaps  of  the  war.  They  were  noticeable  every- 
where— in  factory  and  foundry,  inside  the  dockyard  and 
the  aerodrome,  in  the  filed  designs  of  the  naval  con- 
structor, at  headquarters  of  the  military  strategist,  or 
hard  by  the  shrine  of  the  political  economist — everywhere 
there  was  evidence  of  the  worn-out  implement,  the  super- 

A 


2         THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

seeled  mechanism,  the  discarded  method,  the  exploded 
theory.  It  is  not  entirely  a  coincidence  that  these  were 
also  the  days  of  an  Einstein  and  a  Freud. 

That  this  period  of  stress  and  of  fierce  challenge  should 
have  been  without  its  influence  on  that  whole  range  of 
thought  and  activity  that  may  be  covered  by  the  word 
Religion,  was  not  to  be  expected.  If  some  were  persuaded 
by  the  very  course  of  things  that  the  world  in  which 
they  found  themselves  was  indeed  God's  world,  there 
were  many  on  the  other  hand  whose  contribution  to  the 
scrap-heaps  of  the  war  was  religion,  or  what  they  deemed 
to  be  religion.  In  addition  to  the  moral  issues  that  were 
involved  in  the  question  of  what  kind  of  a  world  it  could 
be  in  which  such  a  cataclysm  was  possible,  there  was  the 
circumstance  that  the  whole  conduct  of  the  war  was  a 
matter  of  exact  science  in  a  degree  which  was  true  of 
no  previous  war  in  history.  The  mathematician  won 
greater  victories  than  the  musketeer  :  the  engineer  had 
everywhere  laid  the  basis  of  success.  If  there  were 
branches  of  science  that  were  put  under  heavy  contri- 
bution in  the  saving  and  restoring  of  human  life,  there 
was  no  corner  of  the  known  that  had  not  been  ransacked 
for  the  wherewithal  to  destroy  it.  It  was  science — 
ordered,  tested,  exact,  organised  knowledge — that  was 
the  sign  in  which  men  had  conquered  ;  blessed  be  Science 
which  gave  us  the  victory  !  She  it  is  that  alone  can 
guarantee  certitude,  and  what  goes  counter  to,  or  tran- 
scends the  limits  of,  her  achievements,  either  of  state- 
ment or  construction,  may  well  be  looked  at  askance. 
There  is  a  realm  of  hard  and  fast  fact,  of  things  that  can 
be  known,  and  that  with  certainty,  in  a  way  to  which 
there  is  nothing  comparable  in  the  whole  field  of  religion. 
A  '  life  of  faith '  all  up  in  the  air,  so  to  speak,  and  un- 
related to  everything  else  that  is  known,  is  not  a  matter 
for  serious  consideration  in  an  age  of  continuously 
menacing  realism.  Such  have  been,  and  are,  the  thoughts 
consciously  and  subconsciously  at  work  in  the  minds  of 
many  to-day,  and  with  ample  reason. 


INTRODUCTION  3 

Nevertheless  the  fact  remains  that  investigation  of  the 
long  history  of  mankind  has  disclosed  no  period  in  which 
the  most  distinctive  thing  about  him  has  not  been  his 
sense  of  Powers  or  a  Power,  expressing  itself  in  the 
universe,  with  which  he  instinctively  wished  to  come 
into  some  sort  of  a  satisfactory  relationship.  There  is 
in  man  a  sense  of  need  and  dependence  on  something 
without  him  ;  there  is  that  hi  his  being  which  goes  out 
to  something  in  the  universe  which  he  feels  secures  his 
place  hi  it,  and  with  which  he  desires  to  be  at  one. 
Challenged  from  the  dawn  of  intelligence  by  the  world 
order  external  to  him,  and  impelled  by  his  sense  of  need, 
he  has  committed  himself  to  that  world  order  in  one 
way  or  another.  As  the  initial  acts  of  self-committal 
proved  to  be  justified,  man  with  his  awakening  mind 
made  ever  greater  demands  upon  that  order,  and  in  turn 
began  to  feel  its  demands  upon  himself. 
r?Man,  that  is  to  say,  whether  he  likes  it  or  not,  is  dis- 
tinctively the  religious  creature.  Man,  constituted  as  he 
is,  cannot  help  being  religious,  however  different  the 
expressions  and  form  of  the  sense  of  the  relation  that 
religion  represents.  Thus  the  Bible  did  not  make 
religion :  rather  did  religion  make  the  Bible,  and  the 
Koran  and  the  Indian  Vedas  also,  for  that  matter.  The 
word  Religion  has  had  to  cover  an  immense  range  of 
experience,  from  primitive  man's  tremulous  response  to 
lightning  and  thunder,  or  the  feelings  associated  with 
the  hesitant  yet  expectant  sowing  of  his  scant  seed  in 
the  earth,  up  to  conscious  fellowship  with  Jesus  Christ. 
Religion  is  a  capacity  and  character — a  higher  awareness 
and  responsiveness — that  have  developed  with  man's 
mental  and  spiritual  progress,  of  which  the  growing 
revelation  of  God  to  man  has  been  the  converse  side. 
In  short,  it  is  the  last  and  highest  expression  of  that 
ilan  vital  that  has  characterised  the  whole  history  of  life 
from  the  beginning — that  reaching  out  towards  a  richer, 
completer,  more  harmonious  life  which  was  all  uncon- 
scious until  it  became  aware  of  itself  in  a  human  mind. 


4        THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

A  sense  of  need,  effort  to  satisfy  that  need  in  some  new 
relationship  to  the  stimulating  and  challenging  environ- 
ment, with,  as  a  result,  change  in  the  organism,  are 
elements  in  the  Neo-Lamarckian  conception  of  Evolu- 
tion which  is  again  slowly  in  the  ascendant.  Indeed, 
Lamarck's  own  word  for  his  theory — '  Appetency  ' — is 
very  suggestive  as  a  theory  of  all  life — the  idea  of  striving 
to  satisfy  a  desire.  A  sense  of  need  issuing  in  some 
fresh  act  of  trusting  self-committal  has  been  the  main- 
spring of  all  organic  progress,  mental  and  material : 
without  it  there  had  been  no  experience,  no  fuller  and 
more  abundant  life.  It  is  in  the  nature  of  all  living 
beings  thus  to  strive  for  betterment,  and  the  striving 
has  been  historically  justified.  If  the  factors  have  been 
different,  yet  the  method  of  Organic  Evolution  has 
been  one  throughout,  whether  regard  be  had  to  the 
development  of  the  amoeba  to-day,  the  saurian  of 
Secondary  time,  or  the  physical  and  spiritual  nature 
of  man. 

When  this  reaching  out  and  self-committal  attain  that 
conscious  level  to  which  the  term  faith  can  be  strictly 
applied,  we  are  in  presence  of  an  activity  which  is  funda- 
mental, and  a  function  of  the  whole  man.  Into  this  act 
enters  every  aspect  of  his  being,  intellectual,  emotional, 
and  volitional,  varying  in  the  degree  of  their  intensity 
according  to  the  aspect  of  Reality  which  is  being  en- 
visaged at  the  time.  A  man's  faith  in  the  railway  time- 
table may  seem  different  from  his  faith  in  the  station- 
master's  word :  but  the  attitude  is  fundamentally  the 
same.  There  may  be  a  difference  in  emotional  degree 
as,  in  ordinary  circumstances,  the  faith  elicited  by  a 
person  will  be  more  rich  and  living  than  that  developed 
by  a  bald  statement  in  black  and  white ;  especially  so 
will  it  be  when  the  object  of  faith  is  God.  The  difference 
lies  not  so  much  in  the  faculty  itself  as  in  the  exciting 
object.  There  is  no  religious  faith  different  in  kind 
from  faith  as  that  term  is  rightly  and  ordinarily  under- 
stood, any  more  than  there  is  a  peculiar  religious  con- 


INTRODUCTION  5 

sciousness  differing  from  consciousness  in  the  regular 
acceptation  of  that  term.  In  every  case  the  basal 
attitude  is  the  same — an  act  of  self-committal  to  that 
which  challenges  our  need  of  satisfaction  and  ultimately 
justifies  our  trust.  It  is,  of  course,  possible  to  work  out 
points  of  distinction  between  the  secular  and  religious 
conceptions  of  faith,  but  to  hold  them  as  absolute  can 
only  be  done  at  the  expense  of  truth  and  with  disastrous 
results  for  religion.  Thus  it  is  easy  to  underestimate 
the  character  of  scientific  faith,  and  speak  of  it  as  if  it 
were  totally  without  moral  content.  But  the  faith  of 
the  man  of  science  is  no  mere  easy  assumption  of  a 
postulate,  or  indifferent  assent  to  a  general  view  of 
things.  His  faith  in  the  uniformity  of  Nature,  that  is 
to  say,  in  the  ultimate  rationality,  the  absolute  sound- 
ness and  solvency,  of  Nature,  is  a  central  dominating 
motif  of  the  man's  activity  qua  man  of  science.  Religi- 
ous writers  are  serving  neither  the  cause  of  truth  nor  of 
religion  when  they  make  statements  to  the  effect  that 
'  our  religious  affirmations,  unlike  those  of  science,  are 
morally  conditioned.'  Both  are  morally  conditioned, 
although  in  differing  degrees.  They  are,  both  of  them, 
affirmations  of  the  whole  man ;  we  believe  alike  in 
science  and  religion,  with  all  that  we  are.  In  religious 
faith  undoubtedly  the  emotional  and  volitional  factors 
may  play  a  greater  part  than  the  intellectual  factor. 
The  data  are  more  often  experiences  of  self-conscious 
states  than  mere  sense  impressions,  while  the  challenge 
to  action  is  more  insistent  in  religious  faith.  Faith 
differs  in  content  and  object,  and  that  naturally  affects 
the  intensive  or  quantitative  character  of  the  state,  but 
in  a  psychological  regard  there  is  no  deep-lying  or 
fundamentally  qualitative  distinction.  In  religious  and 
scientific  experience  alike,  the  fundamental  attitude  is 
the  same. 

If,  however,  this  attitude  of  self-committal  has  been 
historically  justified  as  the  method  of  progress  through- 
out the  ages,  and  if  it  is  clearly  fundamental  in  human 


6        THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

life,  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why  in  its  most  conscious 
and  highest  form — in  something  so  ultimate  and  vital 
as  religion — it  does  not  control  the  whole  of  human  life. 
If,  indeed,  it  can  come  to  mean  the  consciousness  of  a 
divine  Power  and  Presence  '  as  the  ultimate  reality  of 
the  world  and  of  our  life,'  l  it  is  remarkable  that  the 
results  of  reflective  thought  upon  it  should  not  influence 
all  other  constructive  thinking  in  some  way  or  another. 
So,  indeed,  it  was  in  the  days  of  the  Schoolmen.  Theology 
could  not  be  for  them  simply  one  science  amongst  others, 
or  something  in  any  degree  unrelated  to  the  rest  of 
knowledge  ;  it  was  for  them  at  once  '  a  wisdom  of  God  ' 
and  '  a  wisdom  of  the  world.'  Indeed,  it  is  just  as  we 
endeavour  to  make  clear  to  ourselves  the  method  and 
degree  wherein  we  have  made  progress  upon  the  outlook 
of  that  mediaeval  age,  that  we  realise  the  measure  of 
our  loss.  For  the  sheer  grip  and  mastery  of  Nature 
that  have  characterised  the  intervening  ages,  have  re- 
sulted at  the  same  time  in  an  increased  specialisation  of 
study  that  tends  to  dull  men's  sense  of  perspective  and 
of  the  whole,  while  their  very  insinuation  into  Nature, 
their  significant  success  in  becoming  one  with  her,  as 
they  have  understood  and  manipulated  her  into  all  sorts 
of  relationship  with  human  life,  have  in  many  cases 
made  this  world  almost  a  prison  for  that  which  was  never 
meant  to  be  confined  by  it.  The  pilgrim  spirit  of  the 
mediaeval  worker  is  gone ;  the  man  of  the  twentieth 
century  has  centred  his  thought  and  imagination  upon 
the  earth.  Over  the  whole  there  has  been  a  loss  of  the 
sense  of  the  unity  of  knowledge,  and  the  dethronement 
of  Theology  as  Scientia  Scientiarum,  that  knowledge  of 
the  Whole,  which  it  truly  was  for  the  Schoolmen,  whence 
their  hospitality  of  mind,  their  catholicity  and  their 
vision.  Much  of  modern  systematic  theology  has  no 
such  boldness  of  conception  as  it  had  for  them.  Separated 
alike  from  metaphysics  and  from  those  special  sciences 

1  The  Study  of  Nature  and  the   Vision  of  God,  by  G.  J.  Blewett, 
p.  29. 


INTRODUCTION  7 

that  could  illuminate  and  on  occasion  give  it  content, 
it  has  shrunk  in  grasp  and  vision  and  so  in  power,  until 
the  religious  point  of  view  is  considered  as  absolutely 
unrelated  to  anything  in  politics  or  economics,  science 
or  law.  Withdrawing  for  justification  more  and  more 
into  the  realms  of  psychology  and  of  a  certain  kind  of 
mysticism  that  removes  it  from  all  contact  with  the 
world  of  thought,  or  dwelling  in  a  sublimated  region  of 
values  of  its  own  determining,  religious  thought  has  in 
some  forms  confessedly  sought  a  refuge  in  a  region  where 
it  fondly  hoped  to  be  beyond,  and  uninfluenced  by,  the 
common  thought  of  man,  with  unfortunate  effects  on  the 
life  and  thought  of  the  ordinary  man  ;  for  the  religious 
attitude,  which  ought  to  be  the  most  natural  thing  in 
the  world,  has  come  to  be  thought  of  as  an  excrescence 
and  abnormality.  For  most  thinking  men  in  these  days 
the  ultimate  question  often  is,  What  kind  of  a  world 
am  I  living  in  ?  Yet  modern  theology  has  been  little 
enough  interested  to  make  them  feel  and  see  that  the 
world  in  which  they  find  themselves  is  God's  world,  and 
so  they  remain  dissatisfied,  or  indifferent,  or  content  to 
leave  theology  as  an  amiable  diversion  for  minds  of 
leisure.  There  is  no  challenging  resounding  argument 
from  the  age-long  travail  of  a  world  which  has  issued 
in  man,  and  which,  by  the  pervading  purposiveness  of 
its  process  and  the  proved  potentialities  in  man,  hints 
both  at  the  character  of  its  Ground  and  the  further 
possibilities  of  the  individual  human  life.  Instead,  such 
theology  has  been  too  content  with  a  forensic  mechanical 
'scheme  of  salvation'  which  has  little  relationship  to 
the  mind  of  Jesus  as  revealed  in  the  Gospels,  or  to 
St.  Paul's  profound  conception  of  the  Eternal  Christ 
as  at  once  the  very  bond  and  ultimate  explanation  of 
the  universe  as  a  whole  and  the  supreme  revelation  of  the 
grace  of  God  to  mankind,  however  much  it  may  have 
seemed  real  in  the  mental  atmosphere  of  the  generation 
who  ingeniously  pieced  it  together  out  of  selected  passages 
from  his  writings.  It  is  this  unrelatedness  to  the  thought 


8        THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

and  life  of  the  day,  as  well,  too  often,  to  the  social 
aspirations  of  the  times,  that  makes  theology,  and 
religion,  with  which  it  is  so  often  confused,  a  somewhat 
unappealing  thing  in  conditions  when  men  were  never  so 
religious,  or  desirous  to  be  so.  One  of  the  imperative 
needs  of  this  generation  is  the  work  of  men  with  minds 
like  those  of  Albert  Magnus  or  Thomas  Aquinas,  men 
who  shall  see  things  steadily  and  see  them  whole,  and  who, 
starting  from  that  knowledge  of  the  world  which  men 
call  Science,  shall  be  able  to  lead  up  to  that  more  ultimate 
and  comprehensive  knowledge  of  the  Whole,  which  rises 
into  Theology. 

And  most  particularly  is  this  true  with  regard  to  all 
doctrine  about  man.  For  if  the  concern  of  practical 
religion  be  with  '  the  saving  of  the  soul/  then  no  theology 
can  be  content  to-day  with  shallow,  ambiguous  answers 
to  the  question,  What  is  the  soul  ?  but  must  be  first 
driven  into  a  fuller  understanding  of  that  world  in  which 
the  soul  of  man  finds  its  place.  Yet  to  know  and  under- 
stand that  world,  we  must  know  about  its  character  and 
ultimate  Ground,  and  to  understand  aright  the  nature 
of  the  soul's  salvation,  we  must  apprehend  the  nature 
of  its  source  which  is  God,  and  the  nature  of  the  end  for 
which  He  made  it,  the  attaining  of  which  is  its  salvation. 
'  So  that  theology,  in  order  to  be  a  wisdom  of  salvation, 
must  be  a  wisdom  of  the  soul,  a  wisdom  of  the  world, 
a  wisdom  of  God.' 1  And  this  simply  means  that  theology 
to  be  of  real  service,  must  in  some  degree  be  a  knowledge 
of  the  world  as  an  expression  of  God,  and  of  Him  as 
energising  in  and  through  it. 

Than  the  relation  of  God  to  the  World  and  the  Universe 
of  Worlds,  no  problem  is,  however,  more  difficult  for 
the  human  mind  to  set  forth  with  any  satisfaction  to 
itself.  Ordinarily  the  relation  is  covered  by  the  term 
Creation.  This  process  as  a  divine  activity  may  be  held 
to  be  an  expression  of  the  divine  nature.  Both  with 
regard  to  what  we  know  of  that  nature  and  of  the  actual 

1  Blewett,  op.  cit.  p.  41. 


INTRODUCTION  9 

constitution  of  the  Universe,  Creation  reveals  itself  in- 
creasingly as  an  eternal  process.  If,  however,  there 
never  has  been  a  time  when  there  was  no  manifestation 
of  God,  that  does  not  imply  the  eternity  of  matter  except 
in  so  far  as  that  which  is,  and  has  been,  material  owes  its 
existence  directly  to  the  creative  and  sustaining  will  of 
God.  Better  than  the  ancient  writer,  the  modern 
physicist  realises  that  '  what  is  seen  hath  not  been  made 
out  of  things  which  do  appear.' l  Matter  is  for  him 
simply  a  more  or  less  stable  form  of  energy.  He  resolves 
the  atom  into  an  ordered  whirl  of  negative  electrons, 
balanced  by  an  equal  distribution  of  positive  electricity, 
possibly  constituting  the  central  nucleus.  The  electron 
in  its  turn,  according  to  one  famous  theory,  is  purely 
electrical  in  origin — a  strain  or  stress  in  the  ether,  that 
imponderable  woof  of  the  world.  An  electron,  in  Sir 
Oliver  Lodge's  words,  is  '  a  peculiarity  or  singularity  of 
some  kind  in  the  ether  itself,' 2  and  that  which  we  per- 
ceive as  matter  is  simply  an  aggregate  of  innumerable 
localised  strains  (electrons)  at  an  enormous  number  of 
positions  in  the  ether.  The  ether  accordingly  is  not 
expressible  in  terms  of  matter,  for  it  is  prior  to  matter, 
impalpable,  invisible,  homogeneous  in  its  smallest  realis- 
able parts  or  ultimate  structure,  and  not  necessarily 
possessing  any  of  the  properties  of  matter  as  these  are 
ordinarily  understood.  Matter,  then,  as  composed  of 
electrons,  is  an  electrical  manifestation  ;  yet  just  as 
ultimately  it  is  ethereal  in  origin,  being  a  structure  built 
up  in  and  from  the  ether.  That  is  to  say,  certain  physicists 
trace  everything  back  at  last  to  the  ether  and  an  opera- 
tion of  energy — some  Infinite  Power  of  doing  work.  At 
this  stage,  indeed,  the  duality  of  matter  and  energy  is 
resolved  in  terms  of  ether  and  ether  strains,  or  even  of 
energy  alone,3  which  is  for  the  physicist  an  ultimate  ; 
the  changes  in  energy — the  strains  and  stresses,  if  not 

1  Heb.  n  »  (R.V.).  »  The  Ether  of  Space,  p.  87. 

•  For  an  expansion  of  this  point,  reference  may  be  made  to  God  and 
the  Universe,  by  G.  W.  de  Tunzelmann,  chap.  iii. 


io       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

its  actual  source — may,  accordingly,  in  default  of  further 
guidance  from  the  physicist,  be  ascribed,  theoretically 
and  ultimately,  to  the  exercise  of  the  Divine  Will,  and 
will  is  mind  in  action.1  Yet  this  relationship  of  God  to 
the  World,  if  it  is  to  be  true  to  the  facts  so  far  as  we  can 
understand  them,  must  not  be  conceived  in  any  purely 
external  fashion.  God  is  ;  the  World  becomes  :  He  is 
the  Being  in  the  Becoming.  He  is  the  World-Ground, 
the  unifying  principle  of  the  process  in  all  its  phases. 
Yet  He  is  not  exhausted,  so  to  speak,  by  this  continuous 
work  of  creation  and  sustaining  of  that  which  has  been 
created :  the  relation  is  panentheistic  rather  than  pan- 
theistic. The  process  of  creation  presents  itself  to  us 
as  the  outcome  of  the  application  of  Infinite  Extended 
Energy  accompanied  by  characters  that  suggest  and  yet 
transcend  consciousness  and  will  as  we  understand  these 
words,  and  expressing  itself  in  a  progressive  series  of 
extended  forms  in  Time  and  Space.  When  we  think  of 
God  in  His  creative  activity,  we  are  compelled  to  think 
of  wisdom  and  fulness  of  power. 

If  now  we  examine  a  little  more  closely  the  actual 
process  of  events  which  resulted  in  a  world  capable  of 
harbouring  life,  we  gain  from  the  study  of  inorganic 
evolution  a  profound  impression  of  order  and  uniformity, 
and  of  the  provision  in  this  way  of  a  necessary  basis 
for  the  development  of  that  which  was  to  be  assertive, 
and  a  localised  centre  of  activity  from  the  beginning,  viz. 
Life.  By  no  one  has  this  particular  problem  been  so 
thoroughly  investigated  as  by  Professor  L.  J.  Henderson, 
of  Harvard,  who  in  two  books  of  exceptional  brilliance  2 
marshals  an  array  of  facts  from  the  abstract  standpoint 
of  physics  and  chemistry  indicating  the  unique  fitness  of 
the  inorganic  realm  for  life.  He  shows  how  '  the  very 
nature  of  the  cosmic  process  and  of  the  physical  and 
chemical  phenomena  of  matter  and  energy  brings  about 

1  See  later,  chap.  xii. 

2  The  Fitness  of  the  Environment  (1913)  and  The  Order  of  Nature 
(1917).     Cf.  also  H.  F.  Osborn,  The  Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life. 


INTRODUCTION  II 

not  only  stability  of  the  solar  system,  but  very  great 
stability  of  land  and  sea.' 1  He  explains  how  '  the 
temperature  of  the  earth  is  far  more  equable  than  it 
could  be  if  the  composition  of  the  surface  of  the  earth 
were  other  than  it  is.  Thus  the  alkalinity  of  the  ocean 
possesses  a  constancy  which  is  nearly  perfect,  and  this 
depends  upon  certain  unique  properties  of  carbonic  acid.' 
So  also  '  the  currents  of  the  atmosphere  and  of  the  ocean, 
the  fall  of  rain  and  the  flow  of  streams  are  almost  ideally 
regular,  and  are  so  only  because  water  is  very  different 
from  any  other  substance.'  Again,  '  the  properties  of 
water  cause  a  mobilisation  all  over  the  earth  of  most  of 
the  chemical  elements  in  very  large  quantities,  and  no 
other  substance  could  so  effectively  accomplish  this 
result.  Once  mobilised,  these  elements  penetrate  every- 
where, borne  by  water,  and  the  penetrating  qualities  of 
water  are  unique.'  In  this  manner  vegetation  is  highly 
favoured,  and  the  whole  earth  has  become  habitable. 

Even  more  significant,  however,  are  the  properties  of 
the  three  elements,  hydrogen,  oxygen,  and  carbon,  from 
which  water  and  carbonic  acid  are  formed.  In  great 
detail  Henderson  shows  in  the  earlier  volume  that  if  we 
take  account  of  both  intensity  and  variety  of  activity, 
'  these  are  the  most  active  of  all  elements,  their  com- 
pounds are  the  most  numerous,  [and]  the  molecular 
structures  which  they  form  are  incomparably  the  most 
complex  and  elaborate  which  have  been  brought  to  light. 
Moreover,  the  energy  which  they  yield  in  their  mutual 
chemical  transformations  is  more  than  other  elements 
can  provide,  yet,  because  of  their  manifold  reactions, 
more  easy  to  regulate,  to  store,  and  to  release.' 

In  short,  the  primary  constituents  of  the  environment, 
water  and  carbonic  acid — substances  that  have  appeared 
upon  this  planet's  surface  under  the  action  of  evolutionary 
forces — '  serve  with  maximum  efficiency  to  make  stable, 
durable,  and  complex,  both  the  living  thing  itself  and  the 

1  The  Order  of  Nature,  p.  4,  from  the  Introduction  to  which  (pp.  3-9) 
these  points  in  partial  resume  of  the  earlier  volume  are  taken. 


12       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

world  around  it.  With  otherwise  unattainable  effective- 
ness they  provide  both  matter  and  energy  in  many  forms 
and  in  great  abundance  for  growth  and  for  repair,  and  in 
the  ensemble  of  characteristics  upon  which  these  results 
depend  they  are  unique.  .Nothing  else  could  replace  them 
in  such  respects,  for  their  utility  depends  upon  a  coinci- 
dence of  many  peculiar  and  unequalled  properties  which 
they  alone  possess.  It  is  therefore  certain  that  in  abstract 
physical  and  chemical  characteristics  the  actual  [inorganic] 
environment  is  the  fittest  possible  abode  of  life  as  we  know 
it,  so  far  as  the  elements  of  the  periodic  system  are  con- 
cerned.' That  is  to  say,  '  fitness  of  the  environment  is 
quite  as  constant  a  component  of  a  particular  case  of 
biological  fitness  as  is  fitness  of  the  organism,  and  fitness 
is  quite  as  constantly  manifest  in  all  the  properties  of 
water  and  carbonic  acid  as  in  all  the  characteristics  of 
living  things.' 

But  Professor  Henderson  goes  much  further ;  so  far  he 
has  been  dealing,  in  his  own  words,  only  with  '  the  surface 
of  the  problem.'  The  relationship  although  mutual  is 
not  symmetrical.  '  It  is  something  more  than  adaptation, 
for  it  involves  great  adaptability.  In  every  case  the 
particular  characteristics  of  the  organism  fit  a  special 
environment,  while  the  general  physical  and  chemical 
properties  of  water  and  carbonic  acid  fit  the  general  char- 
acteristics of  life.  But  it  may  be  shown  that  stability, 
mobility,  durability,  complexity,  and  availability  of 
matter  and  energy  are  favourable  not  merely  to  life  as  we 
know  it ;  they  are  favourable  to  any  mechanism,  to  any 
possible  kind  of  life  in  this  universe.  For  it  is  not  by 
chance  that  life  needs  to  be  stable,  that  it  needs  food,  that 
it  needs  to  be  complex  if  it  is  to  evolve.  Accordingly  it 
is  not  for  any  special  or  peculiar  form  of  life,  whether  life 
as  we  know  it  or  another  form,  that  this  environment  is 
the  fittest. 

'  Just  because  life  must  exist  in  the  universe,  just  be- 
cause the  living  thing  must  be  made  of  matter  in  space 
and  actuated  by  energy  In  time,  it  is  conditioned.  In  so 


INTRODUCTION  13 

far  as  this  is  a  physical  and  chemical  world,  life  must 
manifest  itself  through  more  or  less  complicated,  more  or 
less  durable  physico-chemical  systems.  Accordingly  it 
is  possible  to  assert,'  concludes  Professor  Henderson, '  and 
it  will  be  presently  demonstrated  that  the  primary  con- 
stituents of  the  environment  are  the  fittest  for  those 
general  characteristics  of  the  organism  which  are  imposed 
upon  the  organism  by  the  general  characteristics  of  the 
world  itself ;  by  the  very  nature  of  matter  and  energy, 
space  and  time.'  He  believes  that  the  facts  that  he 
relates  prove  that  '  a  hitherto  unrecognised  order  exists 
among  the  properties  of  matter.  For  the  peculiarities 
that  make  things  what  they  are  have  been  found  not 
evenly  distributed  among  the  compounds  of  all  the  ele- 
ments, nor  in  such  manner  as  the  laws  of  chance  can 
explain,  nor  altogether  in  such  manner  as  the  periodic 
system  of  the  elements  describes.  If  the  extreme  values 
and  unique  properties  be  considered,  very  many  are  seen 
to  belong  to  the  three  elements,  hydrogen,  oxygen,  and 
carbon,  in  an  arrangement  that  brings  about  stability  of 
physical  and  chemical  conditions,  and  diversity  of  pheno- 
mena, and,  further,  the  possibility  of  the  greatest  com- 
plexity, durability,  and  activity  of  physico-chemical 
systems  on  the  surface  of  a  planet.  This  order  is  masked 
when  the  properties  of  matter  are  considered  statically. 
It  becomes  evident  only  when  time  is  taken  into  acfcount, 
for  this  is  the  order  that  determines  the  later  course  of 
cosmic  evolution.'  In  short,  '  the  whole  evolutionary 
process,  both  cosmic  and  organic,  is  one,  and  the  biologist 
may  now  rightly  regard  the  universe  in  its  very  essence  as 
biocentric.' 1  It  becomes  increasingly  clear,  then,  that 
what  we  have  to  deal  with  in  organism  and  environment 
is  a  single  system  undergoing  change,  the  working  up  and 
out  through  that  which  is  physical,  to  that  which  is  ulti- 
mately spiritual.  One  of  the  ultimate  problems,  the 
ignoring  of  which  by  Naturalism  really  leaves  many 
naturalistic  conclusions  in  a  rather  question-begging 
1  The  Fitness  of  the  Environment,  p.  312. 


14       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

position,  is  just  this  fact  of  adaptation.  The  result  of 
Henderson's  work  is  to  show  that  it  is  a  fact  in  the  inor- 
ganic as  well  as  in  the  organic  realm,  and  therefore  a 
basal  fact  in  the  evolutionary  process  as  a  whole.  The 
more  general  the  interpretation  that  is  put  upon  this  fact, 
the  more  remarkable  becomes  the  circumstance  that  the 
process  has  worked  out  in  that  particular  way  which  we 
know.  The  more  particular  the  interpretation,  the 
stronger  the  probability  of  the  correctness  of  a  teleological 
basis  to  the  process.  As  Henderson  pertinently  asks,1 
'  What  are  the  physical  and  chemical  origins  of  diversity 
among  inorganic  and  organic  things,  and  how  shall  the 
adaptability  of  matter  and  energy  be  described  ?  '  For 
even  the  molecules  themselves  and  their  activities  have 
been  moulded  by  a  process  of  evolution,  and  in  turn  form 
part  of  the  environment. 

Much  the  same  general  impression  follows  the  considera- 
tion of  the  actual  methods  and  results  of  the  working  of 
the  various  geological  agencies  of  change — all  of  them 
forms  of  energy — in  the  later  stages  of  our  planet's  history. 
Reference  has  often  been  made  to  the  relation  that  exists, 
for  example,  between  geological  uplift  and  denudation.2 
As  a  result  of  any  considerable  elevation  of  the  land, 
whether  by  slow  oscillation  or  folding,  the  agents  of 
denudation  are  set  increasingly  hard  at  work.  Streams 
flow  more  rapidly,  frosts  act  with  greater  constancy  and 
effectiveness,  even  glaciers  may  form.  But  as  the  height 
of  the  land  is  gradually  reduced  through  the  erosive  inter- 
play of  the  different  agencies,  the  latter  lose  their  power, 
and  moderate  altitudes  prevail.  Elevation  and  denuda- 
tion thus  balance  one  another  in  a  truly  remarkable 
manner,  and  to  some  purpose.  For  if  the  continental 
areas  had  been  very  high  as  a  whole,  they  would  have 
been  too  cold  and  the  atmosphere  too  rarefied  for  the 
support  of  life.  Had  they,  on  the  other  hand,  been  too 
low,  we  should  have  had  no  variety  of  physical  environ- 

1  The  Order  of  Nature,  p.  iv. 

2  Cf.  e.g.  A.  P.  Brigham,  A  Textbook  of  Geology,  p.  189. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

ment — no  beauty  of  landscape  or  of  sea — a  tendency 
towards  monotony  of  type  throughout  the  organic  world, 
and  a  lessened  measure  of  individuality  amongst  the 
nations  of  the  earth.  It  is  matter  of  historical  observa- 
tion that  the  highest  progress  has  gone  with  a  diversified 
physical  geography,  and  one  great  stimulus  to  organic 
progress  has  just  been  the  actual  process  of  environmental 
physical  diversification.  Yet  that  process  has  been 
orderly  from  the  beginning,  dominated,  in  spite  of  every- 
thing that  may  seem  catastrophic,  by  a  principle  of  pro- 
gressive unfolding,  with  the  present-day  result  of  '  lands 
of  moderate  average  altitude,  great  areas  with  genial 
climate,  rocks  covered  with  soil,  and  soil  supporting  abun- 
dant life.' 1  So  that  we  can  feel  that  the  seer's  exclama- 
tion is  no  rhetoric,  but  a  profound  glimpse  into  the  heart 
of  things — '  For  thus  saith  the  Lord  that  created  the 
heavens ;  he  is  God ;  that  formed  the  earth  and  made  it ; 
he  established  it,  he  created  it  not  a  waste,  he  formed  it 
to  be  inhabited.'  2 

Further,  with  regard  to  those  internal  readjustments, 
due  to  the  continued  shrinkage  of  the  earth  as  the 
result  of  the  loss  of  heat  and  molecular  rearrangements, 
and  which  may  make  themselves  visible  at  the  surface 
as  warpings  of  inconsiderable  height  or  in  the  slow 
emergence  of  a  mountain  range,  it  is  interesting  to  note 
that  increasingly  they  are  being  taken  as  the  natural 
marks  by  which  to  divide  off  the  different  geological 
eras.  These  eras  constitute  immense  periods  of  erosion, 
following  a  big  uplift,  and  end  with  continental  areas 
lying  in  low  relief.  The  progress  of  life  throughout  these 
eras  has  been  a  fact  of  general  recognition  for  many 
decades.  But  apparently  also  it  is  becoming  clear  to 
the  geologist  that  a  like  progress  has  characterised  the 
purely  physico-geographical  evolution.  According  to 
Professor  Schuchert,  the  earth  has  just  passed  through  one 
of  those  periods  of  major  readjustment  in  which  '  all  of 
the  strains  and  stresses  set  up  in  the  earth's  mass  by  the 
1  Brigham,  op.  cit.  p.  463.  •  Is.  45  1S  (R.V.). 


16       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

minor,  incompletely  adjusted  shrinkages '  are  brought 
into  equilibrium.  '  Accordingly  we  see  all  of  the  conti- 
nents standing  far  higher  above  sea-level  than  has  been 
the  rule  throughout  geologic  time,  and  in  many  of  them 
rise  majestic  ranges  of.  mountains.  A  grander,  more 
diversified,  and  more  beautiful  geography  than  the 
present  one  the  earth  has  never  had ;  this  statement  is 
made  advisedly  and  with  the  knowledge  that  our  planet 
has  undergone  at  least  six  of  these  major  readjustments 
of  its  mass.  These  greater  movements  are  the  "  revolu- 
tions "  that  close  the  eras.' J 

To  nothing,  then,  does  the  progress  of  science  contri- 
bute so  much  as  to  the  sense  of  wholeness  and  of  con- 
tinuity in  the  evolutionary  process.  The  steady  filling 
up  of  gaps  removes  the  difficulties  that  confronted  former 
generations.  It  is  not  that  we  know  exactly  how  things 
did  actually  occur,  but  by  extrapolation  of  the  curve  of 
our  knowledge  we  can  reconstruct  within  the  range  of 
conceivability,  if  not  of  probability,  the  course  of  process. 
Thus  to  the  mind  that  realises  that  the  physical  ultimate 
is  of  the  nature  of  Energy,  there  is  no  hesitancy  in 
facing  the  direct  linkage  of  the  organic  with  the  inorganic. 
Life  in  its  earliest  manifestations  was  associated  with 
matter  in  a  colloidal  condition,2 — a  condition  peculiarly 
favourable  to  the  action,  reaction,  and  interaction  of 
physico-chemical  energies.  When,  however,  we  consider 
the  chemical  complexity  of  the  food  of  even  the  simplest 
protozoa  or  bacteria,  it  is  obvious  that  the  latter  cannot 
have  been  the  first  forms  of  life.  Life  in  its  initial  forms 
was  probably  simpler  even  than  the  intracellular  vital 
units  known  as  chromidia ;  possibly  it  was  molecular. 

1  Prof.  Charles  Schuchert  in  The  Evolution  of  the  Earth  and  its 
Inhabitants,  p.  71. 

8  Colloidal,  from  Latin  colla,  glue.  '  A  substance  which  will  not 
diffuse  through  membranes  and  which  forms  with  water  a  kind  of 
tissue  or  gel.' — Albert  P.  Mathews,  Physiological  Chemistry,  p.  n. 
'  The  distinguishing  feature  of  the  colloid  is  that  the  molecular 
unions  shall  be  of  a  feeble  unstable  kind  with  very  little  evolution  of 
energy.' — Prof.  Benjamin  Moore,  The  Origin  and  Nature  of  Life, 
p.  130- 


INTRODUCTION  17 

We  may  think  with  Professor  Moore  l  of  some  very 
complex  labile  inorganic  colloid,  taking  up  water  and 
carbonic  acid,  absorbing  radiant  energy,  building  up  still 
more  complex  structures  through  interaction  with  nitro- 
genous inorganic  matter,  and  finally  in  the  course  of  the 
ages  acquiring  the  power  to  convert  radiant  into  chemical 
energy,  and  lo  !  the  birthday  of  life,  come  without 
observation.  Yet  in  the  beginning,  as  all  the  way 
through,  it  is  a  process  directly  dependent  on  the  Infinite 
Energy  of  the  Universe.  That  is  to  say,  while  the  above 
framework  of  conceptions  corresponds  only  in  a  partial 
degree  to  what  has  been  actually  achieved  or  is  still 
likely  to  be  achieved,  it  leaves  a  justifiable  impression 
of  life  as  essentially  an  energetic  phenomenon — the  per- 
sistent progressive  maintenance  of  a  dynamic  equilibrium 
between  innumerable  energetic  activities  in  face  often 
of  totally  new  situations.  The  control  expresses  itself 
normally  in  an  ordered  process  of  successive  states.  The 
characteristic  of  life  is  seen  essentially  in  the  linkage 
and  interaction  between  the  countless  energetic  actions 
and  reactions  in  the  organism.  Whether  with  Moore  we 
think  of  '  biotic  energy  '  as  a  distinctive  type  of  energy,2 
or  believe  with  Macfarlane  3  in  ascending  phases  of  energy 
marked  by  increasing  condensation,  complexity,  and  per- 
fection in  work-transformation,  or  simply  maintain  with 
Woodruff  as  a  working  hypothesis  that  '  life  phenomena 
are  an  expression  of  a  complex  interaction  of  physico- 
chemical  laws  which  do  not  differ  fundamentally  from 
the  so-called  laws  operating  in  the  inorganic  world,'  4 
yet  it  is  indisputable  that  with  life  a  new  kind  of 
relatedness  appears  which  gives  a  particular  direction 
and  integration  to  energy  transformations  that  are 

1  For  a  somewhat  different  estimate  of  primitive   living  energetic 
relationships,  see  Osborn,  The  Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life,  p.  48. 
1  Prof.  Benjamin  Moore,  Biochemistry,  chap.  i. 

*  Prof.  J.  M.  Macfarlane,  The  Causes  and  Course  of  Organic  Evolution, 
chap.  iv. 

•  Prof.  L.  L.  Woodruff  in  The  Evolution  of  the  Earth  and  its  Inhabi- 
tants, p.  87. 

B 


i8       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

quite  different  from  anything  known  in  the  inorganic 
world. 

Just  in  proportion  as  it  becomes  more  evident  that  we 
are  dealing  with  a  process  that  is  a  whole  in  the  sense 
that  life  has  issued  from  an  inorganic  womb  under 
some  intensive,  transforming,  and  uplifting  operation  of 
Energy,  and  that  thereafter  its  progressing  forms  were 
closely  dependent  at  every  stage  upon  the  changes  in 
the  physical  environment,  so  the  impression  deepens  that 
just  because  of  the  intimacy  of  that  relation  of  life  with 
its  environment,  no  stage  could  be  repeated.  Life  does 
not  return  upon  itself.  No  species  once  extinct  has  ever 
again  appeared.  It  could  not  do  so  in  a  developing 
system,  and  it  is  only  in  the  most  superficial  aspects  of 
things  that  history  can  ever  be  said  to  repeat  itself.  A 
boy  may  commence  to  shave  at  the  same  time  as  his 
father,  but  the  essential  and  vital  fact,  determinative, 
it  may  be,  for  history,  is  that  the  boy  is  not  his  father. 
What  the  energetic  changes  that  ushered  life  in  were, 
we  do  not  know,  although  we  can  imagine  and  in  part 
believe.  Yet  it  is  clear  that  the  organic  colloids  came 
into  existence  after  the  inorganic  at  a  definite  period  and 
stage  in  the  history  of  our  earth  when  many  conditions 
were  very  different  from  the  present,  and  absolutely 
irreproducible  in  their  ensemble,  if  not  individually.  The 
ocean,  for  example,  has  grown  colder  and  more  saline 
since  that  era ;  its  reaction  has  changed  from  faintly 
acid  to  faintly  alkaline.  The  amount  of  carbonic  acid 
and  aqueous  vapour  in  the  atmosphere  has  been  enor- 
mously reduced  since  those  days,  and  the  sun  is  colder. 
In  short,  conditions  of  temperature,  atmosphere,  possibly 
even  in  some  measure  of  chemical  affinity  and  electricity, 
were  greatly  different,  and  in  view  of  the  peculiarly 
close  relation  and  adaptation  of  every  form  of  life  to  its 
environment,  it  seems  unphilosophical  to  look  for  an 
origin  of  life  at  any  other  period  than  the  precise  phase 
of  planetary  development  under  which  it  first  arose. 

In  this  rediscovery  of  the  world  process  as  essentially  a 


INTRODUCTION  19 

progressive  whole  of  more  than  merely  physical  character 
in  that  the  ends  achieved  and  the  life  forms  by  which  the 
different  stages  are  marked  are  objectively  of  increasing 
complexity  of  structure,  progressively  freer  from  the 
domination  of  the  more  proximate  physical  aspects  of  the 
Environment,  and  mentally  an  advance  upon  their  pre- 
decessors, no  feature  has  stood  out  with  greater  implica- 
tion than  the  failure  as  yet  to  give  a  complete  account 
of  any  organic  function  in  terms  of  physics  and  chemistry 
alone.  Metabolic  change  assuredly  involves  physico- 
chemical  'events'  and  transformations  of  energy,  but 
these  transformations  are  conducted  in  a  distinctive 
way  and  to  a  specific  end.  In  the  fact  of  organisation, 
the  fact  that  living  matter  has  a  structure  and  that 
'  each  part  of  the  structure  not  only  bears  a  more  or 
less  definite  spatial  relation  to  the  other  parts  but  is 
actively  maintained  in  that  relation/ l  we  have  something, 
as  we  have  seen,  to  which  there  is  no  exact  analogy  in  the 
inorganic.  The  structure  is  a  definite  expression  of  an 
activity  which  we  call  Life,  and  when  the  latter  ceases  to 
be  in  evidence  or  is  withdrawn,  the  structure  shrivels  up 
and  eventually  disappears  in  accordance  with  the  ordinary 
material  and  energetic  relations  of  the  physical  world. 
The  living  organism  is  something,  then,  which  resists  the 
universal  tendency  to  the  degradation  of  energy ;  it  affords 
a  demonstration  that  the  Second  Law  of  Thermodynamics 
is  not  an  absolute  statement.  There  is  something  here 
resistant,  assertive,  self-regulative  with  a  delicacy  and 
persistence  unknown  elsewhere,  self-reproducing,  an  his- 
toric being,  carrying  its  past  about  with  it  in  the  form 
of  memory  and  modifying  its  present  experience  in  the 
light  of  that  past.  It  is  a  suggestive  fact  in  view  of  this 
assertiveness  of  life  that  while  it  is  readily  possible  to  stain 
differentially  the  '  fixed/  i.e.  killed,  cell,  no  success  has  as 
yet  been  achieved  in  staining  cells  intra  vitam.  In  that 
newer  biology  which  has  really  amounted  to  a  rediscovery 
of  the  significance  of  life,  the  outstanding  fact  is  the  recog- 

1  Prof.  J.  S.  Haldane,  Mechanism,  Life,  and  Personality,  p.  77. 


20       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

nition  of  the  organism  as  an  agent  in  its  own  evolution, 
unconsciously  so  below  a  certain  level,  but  always  through 
its  own  activities,  creative  or  appeasing,  exerting  a  direct 
influence  upon  the  course  of  its  development.  The  con- 
straint of  the  physical  environment  is  at  a  maximum  in 
the  case  of  the  simplest  forms,  but  even  there  life  is  not 
completely  bound,  just  because  it  is  life.1  On  the  psychi- 
cal side  there  is  a  progressive  integration  which  at  the 
human  level  begins  to  be  worthy  of  the  name  of  person- 
ality, although  even  this  characteristic  is  only  yet  in 
process  of  attainment. 

Again,  recent  advances  in  biological  thought,  in  their 
elucidation  of  the  closely  supporting  and  directive  relation 
of  the  Environment,  are  in  that  measure  tending  to  re- 
establish the  supremacy  of  the  Neo-Lamarckian  as  opposed 
to  the  Neo-Weismannian  account  of  Evolution.  With 
regard  to  the  particular  point  of  the  transmission  of  ac- 
quired modifications,  it  is  not  suggested  that  modifications 
acquired  or  developed  in  one  generation  are  reproduced 
in  detail  in  the  succeeding  generation — only  on  an  in- 
credibly materialistic  view  of  things  could  such  a  state- 
ment have  ever  found  any  support — but  it  is  maintained 
that  there  is  not  sufficient  reason  for  dogmatic  assertion 
to  the  effect  that  such  modifications  are  always  totally 
without  any  kind  of  influence  on  progeny.  Indeed,  if  the 
remarkable  results  obtained  by  Professor  Guyer  of  Wis- 
consin are  confirmed  2 — and  they  do  not  stand  alone  3 — 
the  extreme  Weismannian  position  in  this  particular 
respect  must  be  surrendered,  and  in  any  case  the  new 
knowledge  about  the  action  of  internal  secretions  (e.g. 
hormones)  supplies  us  with  a  means  of  reasonably  postu- 
lating how  changes  in  tissue  due  to  environmental  stimuli 
might  affect  germ  cells  and  so  the  succeeding  generations. 

1  See  later,  chap.  xi. 

8  Journal  of  Experimental  Zoology,  vol.  xxxi.  1920  :  for  a  short 
resume  see  Presidential  Address  to  Zoological  Section,  B.  A.  Report, 
1921,  p.  81  flf. 

*  For  other  examples,  cf .  R.  Semon,  Die  Mneme,  pp.  74, 79  ;  W.  Kidd, 
Initiative  in  Evolution  ;  and  J.  T.  Cunningham,  Hormones  and  Heredity. 


INTRODUCTION  21 

We  believe  that  future  developments  will  tend  to  make 
increasingly  clear  that  living  forms  have  not,  so  to  speak, 
developed  in  vacuo,  sorting  out  from  some  primeval  germ- 
plasm  various  combinations  of  already  pre-existing  char- 
acters, but  rather  that  at  every  stage  there  has  been  pro- 
gressive creation  of  the  new  as  the  result  of  the  commerce 
of  living  forms  with  an  active  Environment.  Heredity 
in  a  sense  is  really  '  potted '  Environment,  and  with  the 
Environment  the  last  word  rests.  An  element  in  con- 
firmation of  this  general  position  is  sometimes  concealed 
by  the  use  of  a  misleading  term,  '  social  heredity  '  or  the 
'  social  heritage,'  to  express  the  influence  exercised  upon 
humanity  by  traditions  and  institutions,  by  literature  and 
art.  The  determining  influence  of  these  factors  is  recog- 
nised by  many  authorities  in  different  fields.  Thus  Pro- 
fessor J.  Arthur  Thomson  in  his  masterly  Gifford  Lectures 
speaks  of '  our  social  heritage,  which  is  as  supreme  as  our 
natural  inheritance  is  fundamental,' *•  while  Benjamin  Kidd 
draws  attention  to  '  the  immense  import  of  the  fact  that 
since  man  became  a  social  creature  the  winning  variations 
upon  which  Power  has  rested  in  his  evolution  have  been  to  an 
ever -increasing  degree  neither  variations  in  the  structure  of 
his  body  nor  in  the  size  of  his  brain,  but  variations  in  the 
type  of  social  culture  to  which  he  is  being  submitted.' 2  These 
are  impressive  statements,  presented,  however,  under  a 
misleading  figure,  for  the  use  of  the  phrase  '  social 
heredity '  based  on  the  insignificant  circumstance  that 
such  tradition  and  culture  are  transmitted  orally  or  in 
print  or  in  institutions,  obscures  the  fundamental  fact  that 
they  form  part — and  the  determining  part — of  the  En- 
vironment into  which  each  individual  is  born. 

A  further  indication  of  the  character  of  the  process  is 
disclosed  when  we  regard  it  as  a  whole,  for  mechanism 
cannot  in  the  end  explain  itself.  There  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  something  about  the  ensemble  or  '  hang '  of  the 
inorganic  that  at  any  rate  looks  very  like  purpose.  If 

1  The  System  of  Animate  Nature,  vol.  ii.  p.  497. 

1  The  Science  of  Power,  p.  262  (italics  as  in  original). 


22       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

to-day  the  physiologist  prefers  to  speak  of  the  function  of 
an  organ  or  adaptation,  he  is  simply  employing  another 
word  for  the  same  idea.  The  study  of  the  historical  series 
of  the  forms  of  life  gives  the  impression  that  Evolution  is, 
so  to  speak,  getting  somewhere.  The  facts  of  adaptation, 
and  of  a  changing  Environment  that  has  played  upon 
adaptability  in  the  interests  of  progress,  are  too  big  in 
implication  to  be  mere  accidents.1  Evolution  that  was 
once  supposed  to  have  given  the  death-blow  to  teleology, 
has  really  given  us  back  a  grander  teleology  that  embraces 
the  inorganic  and  the  organic  in  one  connected  whole. 
The  many  convergences  and  anticipations  of  the  future 
in  Nature,  organic  or  inorganic,  the  fact  that  the  world 
process  is  capable  of  being  understood,  however  imper- 
fectly, all  along,  are  at  once  data  more  easily  explained 
on  the  basis  that  Intelligence  of  some  kind  is  related  to 
the  Infinite  Energy  than  in  any  other  way.  We  find  our- 
selves in  the  midst  of  a  process  about  which  it  is  apparent 
that  while  the  end,  so  far  as  it  has  been  reached  at  any 
stage,  can  help  to  explain  the  beginning,  the  beginning 
can  never  explain  the  end,  simply  because  it  is  a  process 
of  advance  in  the  main  line  and  of  progressive  result.  It 
is  a  process  with  a  definite  direction,  irreversible,  and 
issuing  in  fuller  and  more  abundant  life.  It  is  a  process 
in  which  ends  of  increasing  value  become  means  to  still 
higher  ends,  a  process  which  is  therefore  intrinsically  a 
whole  :  or,  as  Professor  Pringle-Pattison  puts  it,  '  a 
teleological  view  of  the  universe  means  the  belief  that 
reality  is  a  significant  whole.'  a  The  idea  of  a  preconceived 

1  Cf.  H.  F.  Osborn  :  '  The  Darwinian  view,  namely,  that  chromatin 
evolution  is  a  matter  of  chance  and  displays  itself  in  a  variety  of 
directions,  is  contradicted  by  palaeontological  evidence  both  in  the 
Invertebrata  and  Vertebrata,  among  which  we  observe  that  continuity 
and  law  in  chromatin  evolution  prevails  over  'the  evidence  either  of  fortuity 
or  of  sudden  leaps  or  mutations,  that  in  the  genesis  of  many  characters 
there  is  a  slow  and  prolonged  rectigradation  or  direct  evolution  of  the 
chromatin  toward  adaptive  ends.  This  is  what  is  meant  in  our  intro- 
duction by  the  statement  that  in  evolution  law  prevails  over  chance.' 
— (The  Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life,  p.  146.) 

*  The  Idea  of  God  in  the  Light  of  Recent  Philosophy,  p.  330. 


INTRODUCTION  23 

plan  elaborated  in  detail  is  replaced  by  that  of  a  purpose 
or  desire  on  a  clear  yet  broad  scale,  but  a  purpose  can 
only  be  attained  through  the  establishment  of  freedom. 
In  organic  life,  and  indeed  in  the  evolutionary  forms  as  a 
whole,  we  have  a  series  of  facts  which  apart  from  a  teleo- 
logical  interpretation  really  mean  nothing — a  situation 
that  in  ordinary  life  is  suggestive  of  mental  vacuity  or 
disorder  somewhere.  Things  are  because  of  their  signifi- 
cance. An  account,  however  detailed,  of  a  human  tear, 
in  terms  of  the  conception  of  it  as  a  watery  secretion  from 
the  lachrymal  glands,  would  be  incomplete  to  the  degree 
of  meaninglessness  without  some  reference  to  the  emotion 
of  joy  or  sorrow  of  which  it  was  an  expression. 

Accordingly,  in  view  of  the  actual  situation  as  a  whole, 
and  of  the  problems  that  Science  does  not  touch,  it  is  far 
from  easy  to  maintain  seriously  that  the  one  faculty  by 
which  man  alone  judges  natural  process  has  been  derived 
in  the  course  of  the  working  of  that  process,  and  at  the 
same  time  assert  that  the  process  itself  shows  nothing 
that  is  akin  to  mind,  intelligence,  or  reason  in  it.  This 
cannot  be  asserted  in  the  sense  that  the  process  is  less 
than  rational ;  in  so  far  as  it  may  be  taken  to  mean  that 
the  process  is  informed  by  some  Ground  displaying  in- 
telligence vastly  superior  to  the  human  mind,  we  come 
within  hailing  distance  of  theistic  interpretation. 
'  Nature,'  said  Tertullian,  '  is  a  rational  work  of  God.' l 
A  further  knowledge  of  this  Divine  Mind  will  probably 
enable  us  to  explain  in  terms  of  creative  mind  alone  that 
which  we  have  at  present  to  describe  in  terms  of  mind 
and  energy  controlled  by  it,  even  as  the  duality  of  matter 
and  energy  may  be  resolved  in  terms  of  energy  alone. 

Of  supreme  value,  however,  has  been  the  discovery  of 
the  direct  implication  of  man  in  the  evolutionary  move- 
ment as  a  whole.  For  if  it  can  be  firmly  established  that 
he  is  an  integral  part  of  the  world  process,  so  integral  that 
it  almost  looks  as  if  it  had  required  the  whole  long  process 
from  Cambrian  days  to  the  Pliocene  to  evolve  him,  the 
1  De  Anima,  43. 


24       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

conclusion  will  be  difficult  to  resist  that  there  must  be 
some  great  potentiality  of  value — some  rare  possibility — 
associated  with  a  being  whose  production  has  involved 
such  travail.  His  arrival  in  the  world  will  give  meaning 
to  the  previous  stages  of  .vertebrate  advance.  Man  thus 
standing  in  direct  organic  relation  with  the  world  process, 
will  prove  that  there  is  something  about  it  which  is  kin  to 
him.  If  he  is  its  growing  point — that  element  or  organ 
by  which  Nature  becomes  conscious  of,  and  best  reveals, 
herself — then  everything  that  is  characteristic  of  man  at 
his  noblest  is  predicable  of  her  in  some  kind  of  way.  Just 
because  of  that  very  intimate  relation  of  him  to  the  pro- 
cess, it  follows  that  his  highest  characteristics  are  not 
altogether  unrelated  to  the  process  itself,  and  it  is  at  least 
probable  that  the  characters  displayed  in  this  highest 
product  are  transcended  in  the  producing  Cause  or  Ground. 
Thus  to  argue  may  seem  to  be  illegitimate  in  the  sense 
that  it  is  an  inference  from  the  part  to  the  whole  ;  but  the 
criticism  fails  where  that  whole  stands  in  a  genetic  re- 
lationship to  the  part. 

The  chief  glory  of  the  old  apologetic  lay  in  the  belief 
that  it  could  think  of  man  as  unrelated,  and  indeed 
opposed,  to  the  rest  of  creation.  He  was  introduced  as 
something  built  to  a  specific  type  into  a  prepared  Garden 
of  Eden,  and  hi  the  same  way  the  Son  of  Man  was  thought 
of  as  coming  into  a  world  whose  condition  just  at  that 
moment  was  as  peculiarly  fitted  to  His  appearance  as 
Eden  to  that  of  man.  It  was  a  world  of  abrupt  discon- 
tinuities, of  intrusions  from  the  outside  into  a  scheme  of 
things  prepared  or  gone  awry.  It  may  have  been  that  no 
other  views  were  possible,  but  it  is  quite  certain  that 
these  were  neither  the  views  on  the  one  hand,  of  man 
when  first  he  began  to  reflect  upon  the  meaning  of  human 
life,  nor  on  the  other,  of  the  Son  of  Man  Himself.1  '  Man 
is  organic  to  nature,  and  nature  is  organic  to  Man,'  as 
Professor  Pringle-Pattison  concisely  puts  it,2  and  even 
more  illuminating  is  the  thought,  as  old  as  St.  Paul,  that 

1  See  later,  chap.  xiv.  *  Op.  cit.  p.  177. 


INTRODUCTION  25 

Jesus  Christ  is  organic  to  nature,  and  nature  is  organic  to 
Jesus  Christ.1  We  know  to-day,  as  we  did  not  know  before, 
that  for  long  millennia  previous  to  the  year  A.D.  I,  men 
and  women  have  lived  and  loved  and  hoped  and  died,  and 
we  must  reach  a  view  of  God  and  of  the  person  and  work 
of  Jesus  Christ  that  shall  cover  this  long  sweep  of  history. 
But  it  is  just  in  proportion  as  we  realise  that  man  is  the 
product  of  an  evolutionary  process  in  mind  and  spirit  as 
well  as  in  body,  that  we  first  begin  to  understand  what 
he  really  is,  and  what  are  the  possibilities  associated  with 
him.  '  God  became  man/  describes  one  of  those  great 
historic  moments  in  the  evolutionary  movement,  after 
which,  as  at  the  birthday  of  life  and  in  the  dawning 
of  self-consciousness,  everything  thereafter  moved,  as  it 
were,  on  a  higher  plane.  Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  through- 
out the  untold  ages  of  organic  history  God  was  becoming 
man. 

Now  in  the  sphere  of  religious  thought  nothing  more 
profound  or  challenging  has  ever  been  uttered  by  human 
lips  than  the  statement  that '  God  is  Love.' 2  It  gives  a 
complete  philosophy  of  religion.  For  if  God  is  Love,  then 
since  Love  must  needs  express  itself  in  action  and  have 
that  to  which  it  can  go  out  hi  mutual  fellowship,  it  would 
follow  that  the  age-long  process — that  divine  self-com- 
munication and  impartation  that  constitute  creation — 
began,  in  order  to  produce  a  plurality  of  human  souls. 
It  is  therefore  not  one  single  act  of  divine  Kenosis,  or  self- 
emptying  and  self-limitation,  with  which  we  have  to  deal, 
for  all  creation  is  a  process  of  Kenosis.  From  the  period 
marked  by  the  dawning  of  self-consciousness,  such  self- 
communication  in  creation  on  the  part  of  God  would 
further  assume  the  form  of  self-revelation  to  the  minds 
that  began  to  ponder  on  the  meaning  of  things,  in  which 
case  grace  has  been  of  the  process  from  the  beginning. 
But  for  reciprocating  Love  on  the  part  of  human  souls 
to  be  spontaneous— to  be  Love — there  must  be  the  possi- 

1  Col.  i 1T.    '  And  he  is  before  all  things,  and  in  him  all  things  consist' 
«  i  John  4  «,  »•. 


26       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

bility  of  choice,  and  in  the  winning  of  freedom — that 
gradual  liberation  from  the  domination  of  the  physical, 
and  the  lower  self,  in  which  consists  the  reality  of  spiritual 
life — there  entered  the  possibility  of  human  failure,  and 
grace  is  supremely  shown  that  in  just  such  a  world,  God, 
Who  throughout  the  whole  process  was  becoming  man, 
did  so  in  a  unique  form  in  Jesus  Christ,  through  fellow- 
ship with  Whom  men  may  come  to  know  God  in  a  perfect 
way,  and  attain  to  newness  and  wholeness  of  life. 

The  subject  of  our  present  investigation  is  whether  any 
such  religious  interpretation  can  still  be  maintained  as 
consistent  with  the  actual  history  of  man.  But  this  in- 
volves, in  the  first  place,  a  frank  and  fearless  examination 
of  some  aspects  of  modem  scientific  knowledge  in  regard 
to  the  physical  and  spiritual  evolution  of  man,  and  to  this 
subject  we  may  now  turn. 


CHAPTER  II 

MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE 

THE  modern  answer  to  the  question,  What  is  man  ?  is 
infinitely  more  impressive,  and,  for  that  matter,  vastly 
more  complicated  than  any  that  was  given  up  to  as  late 
as  the  middle  of  last  century.  The  difference  is  mainly 
due  to  the  new  viewpoint  that  has  been  supplied  by  the 
facts  issuing  in  the  doctrine  of  Evolution.  From  the 
older  point  of  view  man  was  placed  on  a  pinnacle  by  him- 
self and  everything  was  explained  in  relation  to  him  from 
above  downwards.  He  was  thought  of  as  specially  created 
in  a  definite  locality,  at  a  particular  point  in  time  not  so 
very  remote  from  the  present,  built  as  it  were  to  a  certain 
specificity  of  type,  physical,  mental,  and  moral,  which  had 
persisted  unchanged  through  the  intervening  ages,  and 
was  to  all  intents  and  purposes  represented  in  contem- 
porary man.  Reference  was  made  to  the  rest  of  the 
animal  creation  in  connection  with  man  simply  to  em- 
phasise the  distinction  between  him  and  it.  Man  and  the 
rest  of  Nature  were  held  in  marked  contrast,  and  there 
was  no  idea  of  a  genetic  bond.  The  world  of  early  scien- 
tific thought  was  a  world  of  marked  discontinuity.  And 
the  same  outlook  permeated  its  religious  thought. 

Modem  discussion  of  the  question,  What  is  man  ?  must 
commence  with  a  threefold  examination  of  him,  physical, 
mental,  and  moral.  Evolution,  it  has  been  said,  is  a 
jealous  mistress  ;  she  will  have  all  or  nothing.  Her 
claim,  at  any  rate,  must  be  impartially  examined.  Prob- 
ably the  generality  of  modern  thought  is  more  or  less 
convinced  of  the  truth  of  the  doctrine  of  the  physical 
descent,  or,  as  Henry  Drummond  more  truly  worded  it, 

87 


28       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  ascent  of  man.  The  difficulty  is  felt  when  the  same 
claim  is  made  for  his  mental  and  moral  nature.  At  some 
point,  it  is  felt,  his  apartness  from  the  rest  of  creation 
must  be  preserved  at  all  costs,  else  he  is  no  better  than 
the  beasts  that  perish.  It  is  apparently  not  realised  that 
if  man  at  his  best  and  highest,  in  every  aspect  of  his  being, 
is  a  genetic  result  of  natural  process,  then  that  process 
becomes  transfigured  for  us,  and  must  be  reconsidered 
not  merely  in  its  working  but  in  respect  to  what  it  is  in 
itself.  The  more  man,  being  what  he  is,  is  seen  to  be  a 
part  of  Nature,  not  in  a  discrete  and  partitive,  but  in  a 
genetic,  relation,  the  more  is  Nature  ultimately  seen  to 
possess  in  some  transcendently  physical  and  spiritual 
sense  those  characters  that  are  reproduced  in  man.  That 
which  has  achieved,  however  we  may  think  of  it,  cannot 
be  less  than  the  achievement. 

That  man  is  an  animal  is  no  discovery  of  modern  science : 
to  the  Schoolmen,  even,  he  was  animal  rationale.  At  the 
same  time,  the  title  of  Huxley's  famous  book  of  1863, J 
published  eight  years  before  The  Descent  of  Man,  was 
significant  in  its  indication  that  man's  place  was  in  Nature. 
What  modern  science  has  done  is  to  give  him  his  distinc- 
tive place  amongst  the  other  creatures,  grouping  him,  for 
example,  amongst  the  Primates,  highest  of  vertebrate 
forms,  yet  further,  with  changing  differentia,  separating 
him  from  those  other  forms  that  most  nearly  approach 
him  by  reason  of  his  peculiarities,  amongst  which  the 
faculties  of  tool-making,  of  articulate  speech,  and  of  con- 
ceptual thought  are  immediately  the  most  outstanding. 

Man,  physically  regarded,  accordingly  finds  himself  a 
member  of  the  vertebrate  class  Mammalia,  the  principal 
members  of  which,  amongst  other  features,  are  warm- 
blooded and  viviparous,  possessed  of  a  characteristic 
epidermal  covering  of  hair,  a  diaphragm  separating  the 
chest  and  abdominal  cavities,  and  suckle  their  tender 
young.  Of  Mammals  there  are  three  sub-classes,  two  of 
which  have  no  direct  relationship  with  man.  These  are 
1  Evidence  as  to  Man's  Place  in  Nature. 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  29 

(i)  the  Prototheria  or  Monotremes,  a  low  oviparous  group, 
represented  by  the  Duckmole  (Ornithorhyncus)  and  the 
Spiny  Ant-eater  (Echidna)  ;  and  (2)  the  Metatheria  or 
Marsupials,  characterised  in  most  cases  by  a  marsupium 
or  pouch  to  which  they  transfer  their  prematurely  born 
offspring — a  group  of  which  the  best  known  representa- 
tives are  the  Opossum  (Didelphys)  and  the  Kangaroo 
(Macropus).  The  third  sub-class,  the  Eutheria  or  Placen- 
talia,  whose  unborn  young  are  connected  with  the  mother 
by  the  characteristic  placenta,1  is  by  far  the  largest.  It 
is  subdivided  into  some  ten  orders,  of  which  the  highest 
is  the  Primates,  consisting  of  two  sub-orders,  the  Lemur- 
oidea  or  Lemurs  and  the  Anthropoidea  or  Apes.2  The 
Primates  are  for  the  most  part  arboreal  forms,  with  well- 
developed  collar-bones  (clavicles)  and  prehensile  limbs. 
Usually  five  digits  are  present,  the  thumb  (pollex)  and 
great  toe  (hallux)  being  more  or  less  opposable,  and 
commonly  bearing  a  flattened  nail.  The  orbit,  which 
lodges  the  eye,  is  surrounded  by  a  ring  of  bone,  and  the 
stomach  is  simple,  as  compared  with  the  complex  cham- 
bered organ  of  Ungulates.  Their  '  primacy  '  is  essentially 
an  expression  of  brain  development.  The  Lemurs  are 
interesting  because  of  their  antiquity,  being  known  fossil 
in  the  Eocene  rocks  of  Europe  and  North  America,  as  also 
because  of  the  cerebral  development  of  some  members  of 
the  group,  which  has  led  to  their  being  allotted  a  very 
definite  place  in  some  hypothetical  schemes  of  the  ancestry 
of  man. 

The  sub-order  of  the  Anthropoidea  is  composed  of  five 
living  families,  of  which  the  Hominidae  is  the  fifth.  Of 
the  other  families,  two,  the  Hapalidae  or  Marmosets,  and 
the  Cebidae  or  American  Monkeys,  are  confined  to  the 

1  Through  this  organ  a  vascular  connection  is  maintained  between 
mother  and  foetus  upon  which  the  nutrition  and  respiration  of  the 
latter  depend. 

*  For  full  details  on  points  of  physical  structure  reference  may  be 
made  to  An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Mammals  Living  and  Extinct, 
by  W.  H.  Flower  and  R.  Lydekker  ;  The  Orders  of  Mammals,  by  W.  K. 
Gregory  ;  and  Morphology  and  Anthropology,  by  W.  L.  II.  Duckworth. 


30       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

New  World.  They  are  together  characterised  by  a  broad 
nasal  septum  (whence  the  name  Platyrrhine,  usually  given 
to  this  group),  and  by  a  non-opposable  and  sometimes 
reduced  thumb.  The  next  two  families,  the  Cercopithe- 
cidae,  comprising  the  Old  World  Monkeys  and  Baboons, 
and  the  Simiidae  or  Anthropoid  Apes,  inhabit  tropical 
and  temperate  regions  of  the  Old  World.  They,  and  for 
that  matter  the  Hominidae,  are  characterised  by  a  narrow 
septum  between  the  approximated  downward  directed 
nostrils  (whence  the  name  Catarrhine,  usually  given  to 
this  group),  and  by  thirty- two  teeth  ; l  the  non-prehensile 
tail  which  is  found  in  some  of  these  forms  is  rudimentary, 
or  entirely  absent  in  others.  The  great  toe  is  opposable, 
except  in  the  case  of  man  ;  the  thumb,  while  differing  in 
the  degree  of  development,  is  always  opposable.  It  is, 
then,  necessary  to  note  that  Man  has  points  of  contact 
with  all  of  these  families,  but  in  such  a  special  way  with 
one  of  them  that  Flower  and  Lydekker  state  that  '  the 
differences  between  Man  and  the  Anthropoid  Apes  are 
really  not  so  marked  as  those  which  separate  the  latter 
from  the  American  Monkeys.'  a  Hence  we  reach  the 
following  scheme  of  relationship,  which  shows  the  basal 

Man 

v  Anthropoid    Apes 

1  s 

Old  World  Monkeys 


\l 


y 

' 

New  World  Monke 


Marmosets 


N 
A 

Common    Ancestral    Form 

1  These  are  arranged  after  the  formula,  incisors  f,  canines  \,  pre- 
molars  \ ,  molars  f ,  or  more  briefly  }f|f>  where  the  figures  in  either  case 
represent  the  dentition  in  one  half  of  the  jaw  above  and  below. 

*  Op.  cit.  p.  740. 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  31 

error  in  the  popular  fancy  that  Man  on  the  evolutionary 
theory  is  descended  from  a  monkey.  What  is  maintained 
with  confidence  on  the  strength  of  the  evidence  is  the 
conclusion  that  he  and  the  Anthropoid  Apes  are  descended 
from  some  common  stock. 

The  whole  question  of  animal  classification,  morphologi- 
cally considered,  however,  has  in  it  little  that  is  settled 
beyond  dispute .  If  we  attempted  a  classification  on  psych- 
ical lines,  nothing  but  dire  confusion  would  result.  What 
is  worthy  of  remark  is  that  from  the  morphological  point 
of  view  man  has  not  a  sub-kingdom  to  himself,  not  even 
a  special  order.  Many  taxonomists  indeed  make  Homo 
sapiens  but  a  genus  of  the  family  Simiidae. 

But  further,  this  family  of  the  Simiidae  l  which  shows 
the  closest  resemblances  to  man,  is  distinguished  by  well- 
marked  characteristics.  As  a  whole,  these  apes  are  less 
like  quadrupeds  than  the  others,  while  they  have  no  ex- 
ternally developed  tail  or  cheek  pouches.  In  every  case 
the  arms  are  longer  than  the  legs,  the  thumb  is  opposable 
to  the  other  fingers,  the  sternum  or  breast-bone  is  broad, 
and  the  caecum  has  a  vermiform  appendix.  The  denti- 
tion is  like  that  of  man — HI f  •  I*  *s  °f  particular  interest 
to  note  how  each  of  these  forms  has  certain  definite 
peculiarities  in  which  it  more  closely  resembles  man  than 
the  others. 

Of  the  four  genera  into  which  the  Simiidae  are  divided, 
the  Gibbons  (Hylobates)  are  probably  on  the  whole  the 
most  primitive.  Their  present  range  is  Indo-China  and 
the  Malay  Archipelago,  but  all  four  genera  of  the  Simiidae 
once  extended  far  beyond  their  modern  limits  :  thus  an 
extinct  gibbon  has  been  described  from  the  Middle 
Miocene  of  France.  There  appears  to  be  little  doubt  that 
in  the  earliest  Primates  the  main  axis  of  the  body  was 
horizontal.  The  gibbon  shows  the  earliest  and  most 
complete  adoption  of  the  upright  posture  amongst  the 
Simiidae,  which  therefore  in  itself  was  not  a  characteristic 

1  The  exact  meaning  of  the  term  is  doubtful,  and  may  be  either 
'  flat-nosed  '  (Latin,  simus)  or  '  mimic.' 


32       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

that  led  to  '  humanity  '  ;  indeed,  it  is  also  found  in  other 
classes  of  animals  (e.g.  penguins,  amongst  birds).  They 
are  the  only  apes  that  habitually  move  in  an  upright 
position,  but  their  land  gait  is  rather  akin  to  a  rapid 
waddle  than  to  the  stately  human  progression.  The  arms 
are  so  long  that  the  knuckles  reach  the  ground.  Their 
true  element  is  amongst  the  trees,  where  acrobatic  arm- 
swung  springs  from  one  branch  to  another,  sometimes 
over  distances  said  to  vary  from  twelve  to  forty  feet,  call 
for  a  wide  range  of  subconscious  calculation.  With  this 
may  be  correlated  a  marked  development  of  the  brain 
centres  of  sight,  touch,  and  hearing.  The  gibbon  rarely 
exceeds  three  feet  in  height,  yet  has  a  prodigiously  strong 
voice  with  a  peculiar  wailing  note  and  double  call — '  hoo- 
lock.'  In  their  possession  of  small  ischial  callosities  the 
gibbons  show  resemblance  to  baboons,  and  they  have 
nails  only  on  the  thumb  and  great  toe.  The  skull  is  small 
and  smooth,  having  neither  the  great  supra-orbital  or  eye- 
brow ridges  nor  the  sagittal  crest 1  of  the  other  Simiidae, 
and  thus  showing  a  more  human  profile  than  any  other 
Simiidan  skull,  an  effect  which  is  increased  by  the  presence 
of  a  rudimentary  chin.  The  gibbon  feeds  on  fruits  and 
young  shoots,  insects,  and  birds'  eggs. 

The  Orang-utan  (Simla)  is  confined  to  Borneo  and 
Sumatra,  where  it  lives  in  gloomy,  swampy  forests  near 
the  coast.  F.  E.  Beddard  describes  it  as  '  a  large  and 
heavy  Ape  with  a  particularly  protuberant  belly  and  a 
melancholy  expression.'  2  It  is  of  a  yellowish-brown 
colour,  and  the  males  are  seldom  much  over  four  feet  in 
height,  but  they  are  very  bulky  creatures  :  they  also  have 
a  markedly  developed  sagittal  crest  and  very  prominent 
canines.  The  eyes  are  set  peculiarly  close  together  with 
an  almost  Mongoloid  suggestion  about  them.  The  orang 
is  even  more  closely  adapted  to  arboreal  life  than  the 

1  A  vertical  ridge  of  bone  that  runs  along  the  middle  of  the  top  of 
the  skull,  and  provides  additional  attachment  for  the  muscles  working 
the  lower  jaw. 

*  Mammalia,  p.  582. 


34       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

gibbons,  and  descends  from  the  tree-tops  only  at  night. 
On  account  of  its  size  this  anthropoid  is  not  nearly  so 
agile  in  its  movements  as  the  gibbon,  but  the  great  length 
of  its  arms  permit  of  it  walking  along  downward  sloping 
branches  without  inconvenience.  On  the  ground  it  is  a 
very  clumsy  performer,  shuffling  along,  with  bent  knees, 
on  the  knuckles  of  its  hands,  while  the  soles  of  the  feet 
are  turned  obliquely  inwards.  Its  hand  and  hand-like 
foot  are  peculiarly  adapted  for  climbing,  the  four  fingers 
in  particular  having  a  very  hook-like  appearance.  The 
orang  makes  a  kind  of  nest  or  shelter  in  the  trees,  chang- 
ing its  locality  frequently  in  search  of  its  food,  which  is  of 
an  exclusively  vegetarian  character.  The  orang  is  very 
intelligent  and  shows  a  high  degree  of  maternal  solicitude. 
According  to  Flower  and  Lydekker  the  brain  '  is  more 
human-like  than  in  any  other  Ape  '  : l  the  ear  also  is 
somewhat  human  in  its  size  and  gracefulness,  being  placed, 
however,  higher  up  on  the  head,  as  in  the  case  of  the  South 
African  Bushman. 

The  Chimpanzee  (Anthropopithecus)  is  to-day  restricted 
to  Western  and  Central  Equatorial  Africa.  Unlike  the 
members  of  the  other  three  families,  the  male  and  female 
chimpanzee  are  not  so  very  dissimilar  in  their  size,  which 
never  exceeds  five  feet,  although  the  male  can  always  be 
distinguished  by  his  larger  canine  teeth.  Black  in  colour, 
the  chimpanzee  in  its  activities  is  comparable  rather  to 
the  gibbon  than  to  the  orang.  When  it  stands  erect,  the 
arms  reach  only  a  short  distance  below  the  knee  ;  in  this 
respect,  as  in  the  sigmoid  curvature  of  the  vertebral 
column,  and  the  general  uniformity  in  size  of  the  teeth, 
the  chimpanzees  are  more  like  man  than  any  other  of 
the  Simiidae.  The  thumb  and  great  toe  are  also  better 
developed  than  in  other  apes.  They  can  walk  or  stand 
in  the  upright  position,  but  in  running  go  on  all  fours. 
The  skull  shows  well-developed  supra-orbital  ridges  and 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  733.  This  particular  claim  is,  however,  also  advanced 
on  behalf  of  the  gorilla  :  cf.  W.  L.  H.  Duckworth,  Morphology  and 
Anthropology,  p.  89. 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  35 

sagittal  crest :  the  forward  sloping  teeth  and  receding  chin 
present  an  appearance  suggestive  of  Neanderthal  man. 
The  chimpanzees  live  in  families  hi  the  forest,  and  fre- 
quently build  nests  in  the  trees  like  the  orang  :  they  are 
more  arboreal  than  the  gorilla.  They  appear  to  feed  on 
fruits,  and  are  the  gentlest  and  possibly  the  most  intelli- 
gent and  sociable  of  the  Simiidae. 

Although  inhabiting  roughly  the  same  area,  the  Gorilla 
(Gorilla)  offers  a  contrast  to  the  chimpanzee  at  many  points. 
Of  great  size  and  weight — a  specimen  '  mounted  in  the 
museum  of  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  in  Phila- 
delphia stands  5  feet  i£  inches  in  height,  and  weighed  in 
the  flesh  418  pounds  ' 1 — the  gorilla  is  ferocious  and  brave. 
If  the  legs  were  developed  in  the  human  proportion  to 
the  rest  of  the  body,  this  anthropoid  would  supply  every- 
thing that  could  be  most  exactingly  demanded  in  the 
giant  of  fairy  lore.  The  skin  is  black,  as  is  also  the 
hair,  which  turns  greyish  in  ageing  individuals.  Other 
features  of  the  male  chimpanzee  are  carried  by  the  gorilla 
to  an  extreme — the  prognathous  muzzle,  supra-orbital 
ridges,  sagittal  and  occipital  crests,  and  tusk-like  canines. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  skull  of  the  young  female,  lacking 
these  excrescences,  is  much  more  human  hi  its  general 
appearance.  The  gorilla  has,  perhaps,  a  more  human  hand 
and  foot — the  heel  is  especially  well  developed — than  any 
other  anthropoid,  but  its  crouching  progression  is  mainly 
by  the  use  of  all  four  limbs.  Structurally,  however,  the 
chimpanzee  and  gorilla  are  really  very  much  akin,  the 
differences  suggesting  that  the  gorilla  is  the  more  primitive 
of  the  two.  The  gorillas  live  in  families  in  the  forest,  feed 
on  fruits,  and  are  the  most  terrestrial  of  the  anthropoids. 
It  is  said  that  the  young  and  the  female  sleep  up  in  the 
tree,  while  the  male  lies  in  watch  at  the  foot. 

We  are  free  to  pass  to  the  consideration  of  the  fifth 

family  of  the  Anthropoidea,  viz.  the  Hominidae.    It  has 

no  specific  divisions,  but  three  primary  varieties  may  be 

recognised.    These  are  all  connected  by  endless  inter- 

1  Prof.  R.  S.  Lull,  Organic  Evolution,  p.  651. 


36       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

mediate  forms  or  sub-varieties,  and  have  spread  over 
most  of  the  habitable  world  during  and  since  Pleistocene 
times.  These  ordinary  varieties  are  :  * 

I.  Homo  Aethiopicus — inhabiting  most  of  Africa  and 
Australasia — the  Black  or  Woolly-haired  (Ulo- 
trichus)  Man.  The  Negroid  races  are  character- 
ised by  a  dark  skin ;  short,  black,  or  reddish  brown, 
frizzly  hair,  flattened-elliptical  hi  cross-section ; 
dolichocephalic  skull ;  broad  flat  nose ;  low  orbits ; 
prominent  eyes ;  thick  everted  lips ;  prognathous 
jaws ;  large  teeth ;  a  narrow  pelvis,  and  long  fore- 
arm. This  group  comprises  (a)  African  or  typical 
Negroes,  Negrilloes,  and  the  Bushmen  of  South 
Africa,  and  (&)  the  Oceanic  Negroes  of  the  Western 
Pacific,  including  Negritoes,  Tasmanians,  Melan- 
esians,  and  Papuans. 

II.  Homo  Mongolicus — inhabiting  most  of  Asia  and 
Malaysia,  North  and  South  America  aboriginally, 
and  parts  of  Europe — the  Yellow  or  Straight- 
haired  (Leiotrichus)  Man.  He  is  characterised  by 
long,  black,  coarse,  straight  hair,  round  in  cross- 
section;  skull  mostly  mesocephalic ;  broad  flat 
face  with  prominent  anteriorly-projecting  cheek- 
bones ;  small  nose ;  high  round  orbits  and  narrow, 
sunken  eyes ;  jaws  mesognathous  with  moderately 
sized  teeth.  The  principal  sub-divisions  are  (a) 
the  Northern  Mongols,  including,  amongst  others, 
the  native  Siberians,  Japanese,  Koreans,  and 
Turki  peoples  ;  (b)  the  Southern  Mongols,  includ- 
ing, amongst  others,  the  Chinese,  Burmese,  and 
Thibetans ;  (c)  the  Oceanic  Mongols,  including, 
amongst  others,  the  aboriginal  and  modern  Malays, 
and  some  Polynesian  groups  ;  and  (d)  the  native 
Indian  population  of  the  New  World,  whose  colour 
is,  however,  copper  brown,  and  who  are  further 
distinguished  by  a  special  form  of  the  nasal  bones 

1  For  a  full  description  see  A.  H.  Keane,  Man,  Past  and  Present. 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  37 

producing  a  large  and  high-bridged  nose,  and  with 
only  moderately  prominent  cheek-bones.  In  this 
last  group  there  is  great  diversity  in  the  shape  of 
the  skull,  and  more  than  twelve  hundred  languages 
past  and  present  are  known. 

III.  Homo  Caucasicus — distributed  throughout  most  of 
Europe,  parts  of  Asia  and  Africa  originally,  later 
everywhere — the  White  or  Wavy-haired  Man 
(Cymotrichus) .  This  section  has  as  special  features 
soft,  straight,  or  wavy  hair,  elliptical  in  cross- 
section  ;  retreating  cheek-bones;  narrow  and  promi- 
nent nose;  orthognathous  jaws;  small  teeth;  broad 
pelvis,  and  short  forearm.  The  sub-divisions  here, 
according  to  Keane,1  should  be  (a)  the  pre-Dra- 
vidians,  including,  amongst  others,  certain  jungle 
tribes  of  South  India,  the  Veddas  of  Ceylon,  and 
the  native  Australian,  who  is  particularly  difficult 
to  classify  as  showing  various  negroid  characters 
without  the  distinctive  woolly  hair,  and  probably 
directly  represents  a  very  primitive  human  type  ; 
and  (b) the  'Caucasic'  peoples.  This  sub-division 
contains  the  following  groups  :  (i)  Southern  Doli- 
chocephals  —  Mediterraneans,  Hamites,  Semites, 
Dravidians,  Indonesians,  Polynesians  in  part ; 
(ii)  Northern  Dolichocephals  —  Nordics,  Kurds, 
Afghans,  some  Hindus ;  (iii)  Brachycephals  — 
Alpines,  including  the  short  Cevenoles  of  Western 
and  Central  Europe,  and  tall  Adriatics  or  Binaries 
of  Eastern  Europe,  and  the  Armenians  of  Western 
Asia. 

Now,  between  Man  and  the  Simiidae  there  are  certain 
broad  lines  of  physical  resemblance.  The  general  ana- 
tomical structure  is  alike  in  the  two  families.  They  are 
all,  as  it  were,  built  on  the  same  general  plan,  and  the 
five  types  approach  one  another  in  different  points  in 
differing  degrees.  In  both  families  the  tail  is  absent, 
»  op.  dt.  p.  39. 


38      THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

nothing  remaining  of  it  except  a  few  caudal  vertebrae, 
which  are  invisible  in  the  living  subject.  The  dentition 
is  the  same  in  regard  to  the  number  and  sequence  of  the 
teeth.  The  ear  is  well  developed  in  all  members  of  both 
families,  but  it  is  lobeless  in  the  case  of  the  Simiidae — and 
for  that  matter  the  South  African  Bushman — with  the 
exception  of  the  gorilla,  which  alone  shows  a  rudiment  of 
the  human  lobule.  The  brain  with  regard  to  form  and 
general  structure  is  much  the  same  in  man  and  ape.  The 
various  organs  of  the  different  systems  do  not  differ  in 
either  case  in  any  very  important  respect. 

The  community  of  physical  structure  is  paralleled  by  a 
remarkable  community  of  function  ;  in  detail  there  are 
numerous  physiological  points  of  resemblance  between 
man  and  the  Simiidae.  Of  these  perhaps  the  most  im- 
portant is  the  proof  of  literal  blood-relationship  between 
man  and  the  anthropoid  apes  that  is  furnished  by  the 
blood  serum  tests  of  Uhlenhuth  and  Nuttall.  By  this 
means  it  has  been  found  possible  to  attempt  the  definite 
determination  of  the  degree  of  relationship  of  the  various 
Primate  groups.  The  character  of  their  diseases  and 
reactions  to  drugs  indicates  a  certain  fundamental  simi- 
larity in  the  nervous  system  to  that  of  man.  In  the  same 
way  it  is  important  to  note  that  the  Primates  are  as  a 
rule  gregarious  forms,  with  the  rudiments  of  social  and 
family  life  already  developed. 

Indeed,  so  great  is  the  measure  of  physical  community 
that  it  becomes  a  matter  of  considerable  difficulty  to 
formulate  well-marked  lines  of  difference.  They  have 
been  thus  briefly  summarised  by  Flower  and  Lydekker. 
'  The  distinctions  between  the  Hominidae  and  Simiidae 
are  chiefly  relative,  being  greater  size  of  brain  and  of 
brain-case  as  compared  with  the  facial  portion  of  the  skull, 
smaller  development  of  the  canine  teeth  of  the  males, 
complete  adaptation  of  the  structure  of  the  vertebral 
column  to  the  vertical  position,  greater  length  of  the 
lower  as  compared  with  the  upper  extremities,  and  greater 
length  of  the  hallux  or  great  toe,  with  almost  complete 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  39 

absence  of  the  power  of  bringing  it  in  opposition  to  the 
other  four  toes.  The  last  feature,  together  with  the  small 
size  of  the  canine  teeth,  are  perhaps  the  most  marked  and 
easily  denned  distinctions  that  can  be  drawn  between  the 
two  groups.' 1  In  one  or  two  cases  they  might  be  perhaps 
more  sharply  drawn.  For  example,  the  brain  is  absol- 
utely as  well  as  relatively  much  smaller  in  all  apes  than 
in  man.  Thus  '  the  highest  cranial  capacity  of  Orang  and 
Chimpanzee,  which  in  this  respect  approximate  nearest 
to  the  human,  (is)  26  and  27^  cubic  inches  respectively  ; 
(the)  lowest  normal  in  man  (is)  55.'  2  In  particular,  the 
cerebral  hemispheres  are  very  greatly  developed  in  man, 
both  in  bulk  and  in  the  complexity  of  the  convolutions. 
Then,  again,  the  development  of  the  erect  posture  brought 
with  it  a  series  of  morphological  modifications — e.g.  in- 
creased length  in  the  hind  limbs  as  compared  with  the 
fore  limbs,  greater  structural  adaptation  of  these  hind 
limbs  to  bear  the  weight  of  the  body — whose  cumulative 
effect  in  general  poise  and  efficiency  of  the  body  is  really 
greater  than  is  implied  in  their  individual  accomplish- 
ment. In  this  connection,  Flower  and  Lydekker  lay 
stress  on  the  distinction  that  in  man  the  great  toe  is  not 
opposable  to  the  other  digits.  But  this  is  really  not  a 
strong  zoological  character  inasmuch  as  it  depends  on  a 
slight  change  in  the  form  of  a  single  tarsal  bone,  and  it  has 
been  shown  that  in  the  human  embryo  the  hallux  is 
opposable  till  the  fourth  month.  Further,  as  Keane 
points  out,3  the  great  toe  is  still  somewhat  opposable 
among  the  Annamese,  who,  from  this  circumstance,  have 
always  been  known  to  the  Chinese  as  Giao-Chi  or  '  Cross- 
toes.'  Further,  we  may  note  in  man  diminished  propor- 
tions of  the  maxilla,  its  early  and  complete  fusion  with  the 
pre-maxilla,  and  the  circumstance  that  the  teeth  are  much 
more  uniform  than  in  any  ape,  and  form  an  uninterrupted 
horseshoe -shaped  series  without  conspicuous  canines  or 
diastema.  This  fact  is  correlated  with  the  reduction  of 

1  Of>.  cit.  p.  740.  *  A  H.  Keane,  Ethnology,  p.  23. 

*  Op.  cit.  p.  26  n. 


40       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  maxillary  apparatus  due  to  the  circumstance  that, 
owing  to  the  development  of  the  grasping  hand,  the  jaws 
were  largely  relieved  of  their  prehensile  function.  The 
uniformity  and  simplicity  of  the  teeth,  together  with  the 
lack  of  bony  ridges  on  the  skull,  and  the  large  nasal  bones, 
may  be  considered  as  primitive  characteristics  in  man. 
The  true  chin  may  also  be  said  to  be  a  distinctively 
human  characteristic,  although  there  are  approximations 
in  some  of  the  apes,  notably  in  the  gibbons. 

The  same  conclusions  of  kinship  and  community  of 
descent  are  suggested  even  more  strikingly  by  considera- 
tion of  certain  facts  in  the  individual  development  (onto- 
geny) of  man.  Bearing  in  mind  the  Recapitulation 
Theory  or  Biogenetic  Law  that  the  individual  organism 
passes  through  stages  in  its  developmental  history  corre- 
sponding to  stages  in  its  ancestral  history,  we  would 
expect  to  find  that  the  study  of  human  embryology  will 
shed  light  on  the  past  history  of  man.  The  Recapitula- 
tion Theory  simply  gives  expression  to  the  conviction  that 
the  organism  is  a  historical  being,  and  finds  an  explana- 
tion of  data  in  terms  of  that  conviction  that  otherwise 
are  inexplicable.  In  the  case  of  a  form  which  ex  hypothesi 
has  the  whole  of  progressive  animal  history  behind  it, 
the  resume"  can  only  be  of  the  briefest,  and  we  can  also 
understand  that  the  farther  off  the  stage  be  in  time,  the 
shorter  will  be  the  reminiscence  of  it.  Now,  as  a  general 
statement,  it  may  be  said  that  the  results  of  embryology 
indicate  the  ascent  of  man  from  an  initial  unicellular 
stage  through  invertebrate  phases,  and  later  stages  char- 
acterised by  features  that  are  now  permanently  associated 
with  certain  of  the  lower  groups,  until  a  form  is  reached 
difficult  to  distinguish  from  the  corresponding  form  in 
the  anthropoid  apes,  which  finally  slowly  develops  into 
the  distinctively  human  individual.  The  human  embryo 
both  in  the  method  of  its  attachment  to  the  maternal 
tissues  and  in  the  manner  of  its  nutrition,  as  well  as  in 
what  is  known  concerning  the  earliest  developmental 
stages,  while  following  the  general  lines  of  mammalian 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  41 

or  even  vertebrate  development,  shows  in  particular 
the  closest  correspondence  with  the  Anthropoidea. 
Further,  as  W.  L.  H.  Duckworth  puts  it,1  'Of  the 
peculiarities  observed  (i.e.  in  anthropoid,  as  opposed  to 
mammalian,  development  in  general),  it  happens  that  in 
several  instances  the  characteristic  feature  is  precocity  of 
the  formation  and  appearance  of  certain  structures,  which 
are  acquired  more  slowly  by  other  mammals.  And  the 
explanation  offered  for  this  characteristic  precocity  seems 
a  valid  one,  viz.  that  where  so  high  a  specialisation  in 
certain  respects  has  to  be  attained,  there  will  of  necessity 
be  a  tendency  to  abbreviation  of  the  earlier  phases, 
which  are  more  protracted  in  such  forms  as  have  not 
to  travel  the  same  distance  beyond  those  early  stages. 
.  .  .  But  while  we  find  the  closest  approximation  between 
Man  and  the  Anthropoidea,  in  respect  of  early  embryology, 
the  chief  evidence  in  those  portions  of  the  history  thus 
studied,  of  the  close  association  between  Man  and  the 
Simiidae,  is  that  discovered  by  Strahl  in  the  characters 
of  the  histological  structure  of  the  placenta.'  Such  a 
minute  correspondence  testifies  very  strongly  to  affinity. 

Further,  distinctively,  towards  the  end  of  the  fourth 
week,  the  human  embryo  has  a  form  which  closely 
corresponds  in  shape,  size,  and  internal  structure  with  a 
chick  embryo  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  day,  or  a  rabbit 
embryo  at  the  end  of  the  eleventh  day.  At  this  period 
the  tail  is  considerably  longer  than  the  limbs,  which  have 
the  form  of  '  flattened  buds,  with  rounded  margins  ' :  * 
later,  it  gradually  becomes  incorporated  in  the  body, 
owing  to  the  growth  of  the  adjacent  parts.  At  this  stage 
also  may  be  noted  the  presence  of  visceral  gill  clefts, 
four  in  number,  which  appear  as  early  as  the  third  week, 
but  do  not,  as  such,  usually  persist  after  the  second 
month. 

Again,  the  Simiidae,  as  mammals,  are  covered  with 
hair  over  the  entire  body  with  the  exception  of  the  palms 

1  Morphology  and  Anthropology,  p.  211. 

1  A.  Milnes  Marshall,  Vertebrate  Embryology,  p.  496. 


42       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

of  the  hands  and  the  soles  of  the  feet.  In  the  case  of 
the  human  embryo,  during  the  fourth  month  a  downy 
covering  of  hair  appears,  which,  by  the  sixth  month,  is 
definitely  developed  all  over  the  body  with  the  exception 
of  the  parts  that  are  hairless  in  the  apes.  By  the  seventh 
month  these  hairs  (lanugo]  attain  a  length  of  5  or  6  mm., 
but  latterly  disappear  before  birth.  '  At  one  stage  of 
human  embryonic  development  the  arm  is  longer  than 
the  leg — a  typically  arboreal  Primate  feature  ;  later  the 
two  members  are  equal,  and  then  the  leg  outstrips  the 
arm  in  relative  growth.' J  Once  again ;  in  a  very 
common  type  of  the  deformity  known  as  clubfoot,  the 
sole  is  turned  inwards  and  upwards,  and  the  heel  is 
raised.  This  is  a  normal  prenatal  phase  in  the  develop- 
ment of  all  children,  but  in  some  cases  the  development 
is  arrested  at  that  point,  and  unless  relieved  by  the 
surgeon,  they  are  permanently  clubfooted.  Now  this 
particular  form  of  the  abnormality  is  the  normal  con- 
dition of  the  foot  in  the  adult  gorilla  and  orang-utan. 

The  linkages  are  not  less  marked  after  birth.  If  there 
is  a  direct  relationship  between  man  and  the  anthropoid 
apes,  and  if  the  Recapitulation  Theory  is  a  true  interpreta- 
tion, we  would  expect  that  the  resemblances  would  be 
more  marked  in  the  young,  rather  than  in  the  adult, 
forms.  Now  Selenka  in  particular  has  shown  that  the 
skulls  of  the  various  young  anthropoids  not  only  resemble 
one  another  more  closely  than  they  do  later  on,  but  are 
much  more  human  in  their  characters  than  the  adult 
skulls.  Yet  '  as  soon  as  the  teeth  begin  to  appear,  the 
individual  characters  are  assumed  so  rapidly,  and  become 
so  marked,  that,  in  the  absence  of  the  intermediate 
stages,  it  would  be  difficult  to  establish  the  kinships.'  2 
The  skulls  of  young  anthropoid  apes  show  no  brow 
ridges,  sagittal  or  temporal  crests,  which  are  in  any  case 
peculiarly  a  feature  of  the  males,  and  it  can  confidently 
be  predicted  on  the  basis  of  evolution  that  when  a  skull 

1  F.  Wood  Jones,  Arboreal  Man,  p.  203. 

*  For  references,  see  E.  Metchnikoff,  The  Nature  of  Man,  pp.  46-48. 


Fir.  2. — The  grasping  power  of  infants.      (After  Dr.  L.  Robinson, 
by'permission  of  the  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.) 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  43 

of  any  ancestral  anthropoid  form  is  found — hitherto  such 
remains  although  definitive  have  not  comprised  a  skull — 
it  will  prove  to  be  without  either  crests  or  ridges.  The 
same  relation  holds  in  psychical  development.  '  Young 
orang-utans  in  their  "  talk  "  as  well  as  in  their  actions, 
are  the  counterparts  of  human  infants.  .  .  .  But  how 
pitiless  is  the  inevitable  change  of  the  next  few  years  ! ' l 
Again,  in  the  new-born  infant,  the  flatness  and  wide- 
ness  of  the  nose,  the  imperfect  power  of  opposition  of 
the  thumb  (shown  by  its  peculiar  mode  of  grasp),  the 
straighter  lumbar  column,  the  imperfectly  extensible 
hip  and  knee,  the  incurved  soles — '  turned  inwards  so 
completely  that  they  can  be  pressed  flat  against  each 
other  '  2 — all  betoken  points  of  contact,  particularly  with 
the  gorilla  and  chimpanzee.  Further,  there  are  differ- 
ences in  the  relative  positions  of  various  internal  organs 
from  those  in  the  human  adult,  which  are  found  to 
correspond  to  the  positions  of  the  corresponding  organs 
in  adult  Simiidae.  Once  more,  we  may  find  physiological 
points  of  contact  when  we  reflect  why  it  is  that  the 
human  infant,  unlike  all  other  creatures,  crawls  before 
it  walks,  and  why  when  it  begins  to  walk,  it  puts  its 
weight  on  the  outer  side  of  its  feet ;  both  traits  are 
elements  in  the  progression  of  the  adult  gorilla.  Dr. 
Louis  Robinson  made  a  series  of  interesting  experiments 
to  test  what  Henry  Drummond  called  '  the  awful  grasp 
of  a  baby.' 3  Robinson  experimented  with  thirty  less 
than  an  hour  old  :  each  of  them,  with  two  exceptions, 
was  able  to  hold  on  to  a  horizontal  stick  and  sustain  the 
weight  of  its  body  for  at  least  ten  seconds.  Twelve 
less  than  an  hour  old  held  on  for  thirty  seconds,  while 
three  maintained  their  grasp  for  almost  a  minute.  One 
infant  of  three  weeks  supported  the  weight  of  its  body 
for  two  minutes  thirty-five  seconds — more  than  most 
adults  could  do.  The  thighs  meanwhile  were  drawn  up 
in  the  characteristic  anthropoid  attitude.  And  this  Dr. 

1  C.  W.  Beebe,  quoted  in  R.  S.  Lull,  Organic  Evolution,  p.  660. 

•  F.  Wood  Jones,  op.  cit.  p.  205.  *  Th»  Ascent  of  Man,  p.  101 


44       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Robinson  explained  as  a  vestigial  instinct  and  capacity 
persistent  from  the  days  of  ancestral  arboreal  life,  when 
the  life  of  the  young  individual  depended  on  its  ability 
to  cling  round  its  mother's  neck  as  she  made  her  way 
through  the  tree-tops.1 

Further,  from  any  other  point  of  view  of  man's  origin, 
the  eighty  or  so  vestigial  structures  in  his  various  systems 
are  likewise  totally  inexplicable.  The  fact  that  the  human 
body  is  an  old  curiosity  shop  is  meaningless  apart  from 
the  interpretation  that  these  vestiges  (e.g.  appendix, 
muscles  for  moving  the  skin,  ears,  etc.)  testify  to  a  stage 
in  the  evolution  of  man  when  these  organs  were  functional, 
and  when  the  muscles  were  in  regular  use.  So  also,  a 
detailed  study  of  the  variations  in  the  different  human 
organs  would  show  that  many  of  them  approximate  to  the 
conditions  in  lower  forms.  They  are  intelligible  as 
arrested  development ;  from  any  other  point  of  view  they 
are  meaningless.  It  is  this  rehearsal  of  the  story  of  the 
race  within  the  limits  of  the  individual  life,  not  merely 
in  the  initial  phase  of  intra-uterine  development  but 
likewise  in  the  stages  of  childhood  and  adolescence,  that 
gives  such  content  to  the  saying,  '  Unter  jedem  Grabe 
liegt  eine  Weltgeschichte.'  a 

But  if  the  human  body  in  its  development  thus  bears 
within  it  a  resume"  of  its  past  history,  if  the  one  fact 
that  it  bears  witness  to  is  that  of  change,  then  it  is  not 
probable  that  such  change  has  even  now  come  to  an  end. 
Instances  of  the  continuance  of  physical  evolution  in 
man  may  be  seen  in  the  fact  that  nearly  10  per  cent,  of 
Europeans  have  no  more  than  twenty-eight  teeth,  the 
formula  being,  in  their  case,  ffff:  this  loss  of  wisdom 
teeth  is  an  advantage  because  their  power  of  mastication 
is  feeble,  and  their  absence  does  not  seem  appreciably  to 
interfere  therewith.  It  is  an  example  of  what  Metchnikoff 
called  '  disharmony,'  because  these  teeth  are  usually  a 
centre  of  decay  or  accident,  and  they  appear  to  have  no 

1  The  Nineteenth  Century,  November  1891. 

2  Under  each  grave  lies  a  world-history. 


MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  45 

useful  function  that  can  be  set  against  the  disadvantage 
of  possessing  them.  It  was  our  remote  ancestor  masti- 
cating hard  food  who  had  the  advantages  of  these  addi- 
tional teeth.  Further,  there  are  indications  that  go  to 
show  a  progressive  reduction  in  the  size  of  the  little  toe. 
It  is  also  probable  that  certain  forms  of  rupture  and 
uterine  displacement  should  be  construed  as  expressions 
of  still  imperfect  adaptation  to  the  erect  attitude. 

In  face  of  the  above  considerations,  the  impartial 
observer  finds  himself  forced  to  two  conclusions  :  first, 
that  man  cannot  possibly  have  ascended  from  any  of  the 
living  anthropoid  apes ;  second,  that  the  only  tenable 
explanation  of  the  measure  of  community  of  physical 
structure  that  exists  between  the  two  groups,  is  their 
origin  by  a  process  of  natural  evolution  from  a  common 
ancestor.  In  Gregory's  words,  '  at  least  one  great  result, 
the  derivation  of  Man  from  some  as  yet  undiscovered 
Tertiary  Primate,  may  be  considered  to  be  as  well  estab- 
lished as  any  of  the  great  postulates  of  geology.' l  The 
other  alternative  is  special  creation,  which,  unless  supple- 
mented by  evolution,  bars  the  way  to  all  further  inquiry, 
and,  as  Keane  rightly  remarks,2  turns  ethnology  into  mere 
ethnography.  Now  the  special-creationist  view  does  not 
affirm  that  all  the  different  varieties  of  the  Hominidae 
were  independently  created,  but,  so  to  speak,  one  alone. 
Hence  the  development  involved  in  such  extreme  types 
as  Homo  Caucasicus  (white  man)  and  Homo  Aethiopicus 
(negro),  whatever  the  starting-point,  must  have  been  the 
result  of  some  evolutionary  process ;  from  this,  for  the 
creationist,  there  is  no  way  of  escape.  But  here  is  a 
range  of  evolution  not  so  very  far  short  of  that  which  is 
covered  in  the  differences  between  gibbon  and  orang  or 
chimpanzee.  Huxley  indeed,  with  a  certain  exaggera- 
tion, even  maintained  that '  men  differ  more  widely  from 
one  another  than  they  do  from  the  Apes ;  while  the 

1  William  K.  Gregory,  '  The  Orders  of  Mammals '  (vol.  xxvii.  of 
Bulletin  of  the  American  Museum  of  Natural  History),  p.  321. 
1  Of>.  cit.  p.  28. 


46       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

lowest  Apes  differ  as  much,  in  proportion,  from  the  highest, 
as  the  latter  does  from  Man.' 1  On  the  other  hand,  the 
suggested  origin  of  the  human  race  from  two  or  three  dis- 
continuous variations  in  mental  equipment  from  the 
ancestral  common  stock  presents  a  reconciliation  of  the 
older  and  newer  views  that  possibly  corresponds  to  the 
truth.  But  whatever  the  place  of  Man  in  Nature  be,  he 
is  distinguished  as  man  from  the  rest  of  the  animal  creation 
by  his  knowledge  that  he  has  a  place  in  Nature,  by  his 
saving  discontent  with  life  on  a  purely  animal  plane,  by 
his  power  to  communicate  his  ideas  in  speech  and  writing 
to  his  fellows,  by  his  ability  to  fashion  tools,  and  by  what 
may  be  termed  his  capacity  for  God — in  short,  by  a  whole 
series  of  psychical  qualities  which  make  it  immediately 
clear  that  it  is  in  his  spiritual  rather  than  his  physical 
nature,  however  derived,  that  his  real  significance  lies. 

1  op.  dt.  p.  78. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  MAN 

To  the  evidence  for  Evolution  derived  from  the  individual 
or  ontogenetic  history  of  man  there  must  now  be  added 
the  rapidly  accumulating  data  that  relate  to  his  phylo- 
genetic  or  racial  history.  Even  when  we  include  the  lost 
years  of  the  war,  the  fact  remains  that  in  the  first  two 
decades  of  the  twentieth  century  we  have  learned  as  much 
as  in  all  the  previous  years  of  a  science  which  may  be  said 
to  have  been  born  in  1847,  when  Boucher  de  Perthes  pub- 
lished his  story  of  the  worked  flints  that  he  had  found  in 
an  old  buried  bank  of  the  Somme,  dropped  mayhap  a 
quarter  of  a  million  years  before  by  Palaeolithic  man,  and 
so  succeeded,  after  a  struggle,  in  making  the  scientific 
world  for  the  first  time  really  sympathetic  to  the  idea  of 
the  possibly  great  antiquity  of  man.1  Already  that 
period  of  antiquity  has  been  subdivided  into  Eolithic, 
Palaeolithic,  Mesolithic,  and  Neolithic  Ages,  peopled  each 
year  by  an  increasing  number  of  representatives  to  whom 
names  have  been  given,  and  of  whose  manner  of  life  and 
thought  we  are  coming  to  know  more  and  more.  When 
the  earliest  remains  of  Neanderthal  man  were  found  it 
was  always  possible  to  explain  his  peculiarities  as  some- 
thing pathological,  but  now  that  the  bones  of  at  least 
two  dozen  of  his  contemporaries  are  known,  all  showing 
his  distinctive  characters,  he  no  longer  is  left  in  peculiar 

1  Several  discoveries  antedated  this  year,  notably  the  Gray's  Inn 
Lane  flint  '  weapon  '  found  towards  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  similar  implements  found  by  Sir  John  Frere  in  1797  in 
brick  earth  at  Hoxne  in  Suffolk,  and  the  Engis  skull  discovered  in  1833 
by  P.  C.  Schmerling  in  a  Belgian  cave ;  but  Boucher  de  Perthes  was 
the  first  to  produce  any  general  conviction. 

47 


48       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

isolation  but  has  to  be  reckoned  with  as  a  real  element 
in  the  history  of  mankind.  And  we  can  be  sure  that  a 
hundred  years  from  now  the  Stone  Age  in  all  its  stages 
will  be  as  well  known  as  the  Bronze  Age,  which  succeeded 
it,  is  known  to-day.  The  widening  of  outlook  in  this 
respect  has  been  so  enormous  that  the  continued  reten- 
tion of  the  date  B.C.  4004  opposite  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis  in  at  any  rate  one  edition  of  the  English  Bible 
constitutes  a  gloss,  contrary  to  the  whole  spirit  and  in- 
tention of  the  Book.1  The  written  records  of  Babylonia 
and  Egypt  go  back  at  any  rate  to  the  fifth  millennium 
before  Christ,  and  it  is  obvious  that  if  there  are  indubitable 
evidences  of  man  in  Pleistocene,  not  to  speak  of  Pliocene 
deposits,  we  would  then  need  to  go  back  into  Miocene 
times  to  look  for  the  generalised  ancestor  that  on  the 
evolutionary  theory  was  the  common  precursor  of  man 
and  the  anthropoid  apes. 

Prior  even  to  a  theoretical  consideration  of  the  antiquity 
of  man,  it  is  advisable  to  learn  the  state  of  modern  expert 
opinion  upon  the  question  of  the  probable  age  of  the 
earth.  As  is  well  known,  this  problem  was  for  long  the 
source  of  fruitful  disputation  between  physicist  and 
geologist.  The  latter  demanded  anywhere  from  thirty 
to  about  a  hundred  million  years  for  the  changes  in  the 
earth's  surface  since  the  azoic  period,  and  in  the  various 
forms  of  life  that  inhabited  it.  The  older  physicists  for 
good  reasons  of  their  own — definite  calculations  connected 
for  the  most  part  with  the  radiation  of  heat  from  a  self- 
cooling  body,  such  as  the  earth  was  supposed  to  be — re- 
jected these  demands  as  impossible,  and  cut  down  the 
figures  to  twenty  or  even  ten  million  years.2  '  We  have 

1  '  Dr.  John  Lightfoot,  Vice-Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Cam- 
bridge, and  one  of  the  most  eminent  Hebrew  scholars  of  his  time, 
declared,  as  the  result  of  his  most  profound  and  exhaustive  study  of 
the  Scriptures,  that  man  was  created  by  the  Trinity  on  October  23, 
4004  B.C.,  at  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning.' — (Andrew  D.  White,  A 
History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology  in  Christendom,  vol.  i. 
p.  9.)  We  may  smile — as  men  will  smile  one  hundred  years  hence  at 
many  of  the  equally  dogmatic  statements  of  to-day. 

8  P.  G.  Tait,  Recent  Advances  in  Physical  Science,  p.  169. 


THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  MAN  49 

now  good  reason,'  said  Lord  Kelvin,1  more  than  a  quarter 
of  a  century  ago,  on  the  basis  of  certain  definite  premises, 
'  for  judging  that  the  consolidation  of  the  earth  was  more 
than  twenty  and  less  than  forty  million  years  ago  ;  and 
probably  much  nearer  twenty  than  forty,'  and  many 
similar  statements  could  be  quoted  from  the  scientific 
literature  of  that  period.  It  is  obvious  that  the  span 
which  could  have  been  allocated  to  man,  the  relative 
moment  of  whose  appearance  in  the  process  of  life  is 
approximately  known,  could  not  have  admitted  of  great 
antiquity  if  the  whole  process  had  had  to  be  fitted  into  a 
scale  of  ten  to  twenty  million  years. 

The  discovery  of  radio-activity  and  the  methods  of 
estimation  based  upon  it  have,  however,  wholly  altered 
the  position,  and  decided  the  issue  in  favour  of  the  geolo- 
gists. In  1906  Professors  Strutt  (now  Lord  Rayleigh) 
and  Joly  proved  that  the  most  ordinary  rocks  contain  on 
the  average  perfectly  determinable  quantities  of  radium 
and  of  its  original  parent  uranium.  The  amount,  small 
as  it  is,  has  yet  been  shown  in  the  case  of  an  assumed 
crust  of  rock  of  20  to  25  miles  in  thickness,  to  be  sufficient 
in  thermal  output  to  supply  the  whole  of  the  heat  lost  by 
radiation  into  outer  space.  That  is  to  say,  the  earth  has 
had,  and  still  has,  within  itself  a  source  of  energy  sufficient 
to  maintain  the  existing  conditions  of  temperature  over 
a  period  equal  to  the  most  extreme  geological  demands. 
The  earth  is  certainly  a  self-cooling  body,  but  the  impli- 
cations of  radio-activity  show  that  it  is  also  to  some 
extent  a  self-heating  body.  In  Lord  Rayleigh's  words,2 
'  the  upshot  is  that  radio-active  methods  of  estimation 
indicate  a  moderate  multiple  of  1000  million  years  as  the 
possible  and  probable  duration  of  the  earth's  crust  as 
suitable  for  the  habitation  of  living  beings,  and  that  no 
other  considerations  from  the  side  of  physics  or  astronomy 
afford  any  definite  presumption  against  this  estimate.' 

1  Trans,  of  the  Victoria  Institute,  vol.  xxxi.  p.  20. 
1  Report  of  British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  1921, 
p.  414. 

D 


50       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

This  conclusion  depends,  however,  on  the  assumption  of 
uniformity  in  the  disintegration  of  uranium,  an  assump- 
tion against  which  there  appears  to  be  some  evidence. 

Man  being  the  crown  of  creation,  it  is  within  the  latest 
of  the  geological  successions  that  we  shall  naturally  expect 
to  find  the  evidence  of  his  presence.  These  are  known 
collectively  as  the  Quaternary  Era,  including  the  Pleisto- 
cene,1 and  Holocene  Systems.  The  Quaternary  may  be 
described  compendiously  as  The  Age  of  Man,  just  as  the 
preceding  Tertiary  (Cainozoic)  Era  is  sometimes  spoken 
of  as  The  Age  of  Mammals,  the  Secondary  (Mesozoic)  as 
The  Age  of  Reptiles,  and  the  Primary  (Palaeozoic)  as  The 
Age  of  Fishes,  from  the  dominant  forms  of  these  eras. 
If  the  whole  evolutionary  process  of  the  earth  be  thought 
of  in  terms  of  a  day  of  twenty-four  hours,  the  Quatern- 
ary would  have  occupied  about  four  minutes,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  comparative  duration. 

The  relation  of  the  different  eras  and  systems  may  be 
seen  from  the  following  table.  It  should,  however,  be 
carefully  remembered  that  there  is  no  absolute  discon- 
tinuity in  Nature  such  as  is  represented  by  the  use  of 
separate  words  to  express  the  different  systems  in  the 
various  formations. 

Era.  Systems.                           Characteristics. 

PSYCHOZOIC  /Holocene 

or  \Pleistocene                     Age  of  Man. 

QUATERNARY  (Ice  Age) 

CAINOZOIC  I  Miocene  Age  of  Mammals  and 

TERTIARY  [%$££?*  Flowering  Plants. 

MESOZOIC  fCretaceous  . 

SECONDARY  (iSSsSc  cads  and 

»  The  terms  Eocene  (Dawn  of  the  New),  Oligocene  (Few  of  the  New), 
Miocene  (Minority  of  the  New),  Pliocene  (Majority  of  the  New),  Pleisto- 
cene (Most  of  the  New),  and  Holocene  (All  of  the  New),  by  which  the 
successive  systems  of  the  Tertiary  and  Quaternary  Eras  are  designated, 
were  originally  based  on  these  proportions  of  shells  of  molluscs  found 
in  them,  but  are  true  of  all  the  forms  of  life  in  them. 


THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  MAN 


Systems.                           Characteristics. 

Permian 

(Ice  Age  in  S.  hemi- 

Age    of     Amphibians 

sphere) 

and  Club-mosses. 

Carboniferous 

Devonian 
Silurian 

Age  of  Fishes. 

Ordovician 
Cambrian 

Age  of  Molluscs. 

Glacial  conditions   at     Age       of       Primitive 

commencement  and        Marine          Inverte- 

close)                                 brates. 

Era. 


PALAEOZOIC 

or 
PRIMARY 


PROTEROZOIC 


ARCHAEOZOIC  Age  of  Protozoan  and 

Protophytal  Life. 

COSMIC  Age  of  Inorganic  Pre- 

paration. 

An  outstanding  feature  of  the  Quaternary  is  that  in  the 
Pleistocene  it  included  an  Ice  Age,  of  which  there  prob- 
ably had  been  at  least  three  others  previously.  An  Ice 
Age  is  essentially  a  periodic  phenomenon  both  as  a  whole 
and  in  its  phases.  Its  causation  is  a  complex  problem 
which  has  not  yet  been  completely  elucidated.  Croll's 
Theory,  depending  upon  changes  in  the  eccentricity  or 
elongation  of  the  earth's  orbit  round  the  sun,  together 
with  other  changes  due  to  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes, 
may  possibly  account  for  the  periodicity,  but  it  is  certain 
that  the  regions  principally  affected— Northern  Europe, 
North  America,  and  the  Himalayas — stood  at  a  greater 
elevation  in  Pleistocene  time  than  they  do  to-day,  a  cir- 
cumstance which,  as  it  came  into  being,  would  greatly 
assist  in  the  production  and  maintenance  of  glacial  con- 
ditions. Of  this  elevation  there  is  clear  proof  in  the 
fiords  or  half-drowned  river  valleys  of  Norway,  Scotland, 
and  North  America.  These  are  the  result  of  the  subsequent 
depression  which  at  the  close  of  the  Pleistocene  made 
Great  Britain,  hitherto  joined  to  the  European  Continent, 
an  archipelago  of  islands.  The  data  go  to  show  that  at 
several  different  intervals  during  the  Pleistocene  practi- 
cally the  whole  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  together 


52       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

with  the  northern  half  of  Europe,  was  covered  by  a  vast 
sheet  of  ice  of  great  thickness  that  had  its  chief  centre  of 
flow  in  Scandinavia,  east  of  the  present  watershed.  Out 
over  the  shallow  basin  of  the  North  Sea  it  flowed,  carrying 
Scandinavian  boulders  and  depositing  them  in  England, 
where  conditions  were  much  as  in  Spitzbergen  or  Green- 
land to-day.  The  Alps  were  the  location  of  enormous 
fields  of  ice  above  which  projected  the  isolated  tops  of  the 
highest  mountains,  and  of  glaciers  with  which  those  of 
to-day  are  mere  pigmies  in  comparison.  These  glaciers 
descended  far  to  the  south  in  France,  the  town  of  Lyons 
being  built  on  the  terminal  moraine  of  the  Rhone  glacier 
of  this  period.  Other  centres  of  glacial  extension  in 
Europe  were  the  Pyrenees  and  Carpathians,  while  evidences 
of  contemporary  ice  action  on  a  grander  scale  even  than 
in  Europe  are  found  in  North  America,  as  also  in  the 
Caucasus  and  Himalayas. 

The  characteristic  deposits  of  the  Pleistocene  in  the 
Alpine  region  have  been  made  the  subject  of  intensive 
study,1  with  the  result  that  it  is  now  possible  to  recon- 
struct to  a  large  degree  the  conditions  of  the  Great  Ice 
Age.  It  was  a  period  of  marked  vicissitudes — of  phases 
of  glacial  conditions  alternating  with  genial  interglacial 
epochs  long  enough  to  allow  of  the  widespread  develop- 
ment of  a  temperate  and  even  semi-tropical  fauna  and 
flora.  Of  these  alternations  four  have  been  made  out  in 
the  region  of  the  Alps,  and  a  nomenclature,  taken  from 
the  names  of  rivers  in  association  with  whose  courses  the 
phenomena  have  been  studied,  is  commonly  employed 
to  indicate  the  glacial  phases,  as  follows,  beginning  with 
the  oldest — Giinz,  Mindel,  Riss,  and  Wiirm.  Thus  a 
lowering  of  temperature  and  gradual  elevation  of  the 
land  surface  over  the  definite  areas  already  indicated 
took  place  towards  the  close  of  the  Pliocene  and  through- 
out the  beginning  of  the  Pleistocene  ;  this  culminated 
eventually  in  the  Giinz  glacial  phase.  Thereafter  the  ice- 

1  Ci.  Die  Alpen  im  Eiszeitalter,  by  Profs.  Penck  and  Bruckner,  and 
Prof.  James  Geikie's  Antiquity  of  Man  in  Europe. 


THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  MAN  53 

sheets  gradually  retreated  toward  their  sources,  thus 
ushering  in  the  Giinz-Mindel  interglacial  phase,  which 
gradually  reached  its  zenith  of  geniality,  and  then  in  turn 
became  overshadowed  by  the  imminent  Mindelian  glacial 
phase.  And  so  on,  until  the  Wiirmian  climax,  and  there- 
after through  two  minor  alternations  (Laufen  and  Achen) 
within  the  Wiirmian  period,  and  three  subsequent  smaller 
variations  comprising  the  so-called  Post-glacial  phase, 
into  the  Holocene  or  Post-Pleistocene  days,  in  the  later 
of  which  we  live,  and  which,  for  all  we  know,  may  be 
part  of  one  more  interglacial  phase. 

It  is  confessedly  difficult  to  express  these  different 
phases  in  terms  of  solar  years,  yet  with  this  determination 
in  great  part  is  bound  up  the  question  of  the  antiquity  of 
man,  for  Palaeolithic  man  is  eminently  Pleistocene,  while 
Neolithic  man  corresponds  to  the  Post-Pleistocene.  The 
Giinz  glaciation  appears  to  have  been  the  longest,  and 
the  Mindel,  perhaps,  the  most  extensive,  while  the 
moraines  of  the  Riss  period,  when  the  snowline  was  some 
1300  metres  below  the  snowline  of  to-day,  are  particularly 
well  preserved.  The  Wiirmian  period  was  apparently 
not  so  severe  as  its  immediate  predecessor.  The  three 
smaller  variations  which  eventually  led  to  the  conditions 
of  modem  times  have  been  designated  Buhl,  Gschnitz, 
and  Daun  respectively  by  Penck  and  Bruckner,  who 
consider  that  the  Daun  '  stadium  '  ended  about  7000  B.C., 
and  the  Buhl  '  stadium '  about  20,000  B.C.  When  to 
these  considerations  we  add  the  opinion  of  these  investi- 
gators that  the  Giinz-Mindel  interglacial  period  was 
approximately  three  times  the  length  of  the  Post-glacial 
phase  (i.e.  about  60,000  years  in  all),  that  the  Mindel- 
Riss  interglacial  period  extended  over  twelve  of  the  same 
unit  (i.e.  about  240,000  years),  that  the  Riss-Wiirmian 
interglacial  period  was  not  less  than  the  Giinz-Mindel, 
and  that  allowance  has  still  to  be  made  for  the  duration 
of  the  actual  glacial  phases,  we  realise  that  in  the  case 
of  the  Pleistocene  we  are  dealing  with  an  immense 
section  of  time.  Whatever  the  criterion  adopted  for  the 


54       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

attempted  determination  of  Pleistocene  chronology,  the 
general  impression  is  the  same.  '  When  we  reflect,' 
wrote  Professor  James  Geikie,  '  on  the  many  geographical 
changes  that  man  has  witnessed — the  submergence  and 
re-elevation  of  enormous  tracts — the  erosion  of  valleys 
and  general  lowering  of  the  surface  by  denudation  ;  when 
we  consider  that  he  has  lived  through  a  succession  of 
stupendous  climatic  revolutions  ;  that  he  has  seen  widely 
contrasted  floras  and  faunas  alternately  occupying  our 
Continent — tundras,  steppes,  and  great  forests  succeeding 
each  other  again  and  again — we  must  feel  convinced  that 
the  few  thousand  years  that  have  elapsed  since  the  down- 
fall of  Babylonian,  Assyrian,  and  Egyptian  empires  are 
as  nothing  compared  with  the  long  aeons  that  separate 
the  earliest  times  of  history  from  the  apparition  of 
Palaeolithic  Man  in  Europe.' l  Professor  Geikie's  own 
estimate  for  the  duration  of  Pleistocene  time  was  '  a 
minimum  period  of  620,000  years.'  2  Everything  will, 
of  course,  depend  on  the  precise  association  which  can 
be  demonstrated  between  the  location  of  human  remains 
or  implements  of  human  workmanship  and  definite 
horizons  in  the  Pleistocene,  or  even,  it  may  be,  Pliocene 
deposits.  But  when  we  realise  that  flints  of  indubitable 
human  workmanship  are  found  in  the  drift  gravel  of  the 
Somme  at  a  distance  of  100  feet  above  the  present  level 
of  the  river,  and  then  consider  how  slowly  the  bed  of 
the  river  is  being  lowered  by  erosion,  we  begin  to  have 
some  sense  of  the  vast  period  that  has  elapsed  since  man 
first  dropped  these  implements  by  the  water's  edge,  and 
are  ready  to  believe  that  400,004  B.C.  is  a  more  approxi- 
mate date  to  his  appearance  than  4004. 

The  precise  correlation  of  the  geological  phases  of  the 
Great  Ice  Age  with  the  cultural  phases  that  are  recog- 
nised by  the  archaeologist  is  a  matter  of  extreme  intri- 
cacy on  which  no  degree  of  certainty  has  yet  been 
reached,  nor  is  this  likely  to  be  the  case  for  a  considerable 
time  to  come.  The  different  culture  phases  take  their 

1  The  Antiquity  of  Man  in  Europe,  p.  300.  *  Op.  cit.  p.  302. 


56       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

names,  as  will  be  described  in  greater  detail  in  the  next 
chapter,  from  the  stations  or  deposits  where  they  were 
first  found  and  described.  Without,  at  this  stage, 
definitely  attempting  to  allocate  either  particular  human 
remains  or  characteristic  implements  to  any  special 
deposit,  it  may  be  stated  that  within  the  period  covered 
by  the  Pleistocene  of  the  geologist,  there  lie  the  following 
phases  of  Palaeolithic  culture,  beginning  with  the  oldest — 
Chellean,  Acheulean,  Mousterian,  Aurignacian,  Solutrean, 
and  Magdalenian.  The  precise  difficulty  lies  in  attempt- 
ing to  correlate  them  with  the  Giinz,  Mindel,  Riss,  and 
Wiirmian  glacial  phases  and  their  connecting  interglacial 
periods.  Both  Penck  and  Geikie  agree  in  placing  the 
Giinz  or  first  glaciation  within  the  Pliocene,  corresponding 
to  the  time  of  the  Norwich  Crag  formation  in  England. 
The  succeeding  interglacial  period  which  lies  at  the  base 
of  the  Pleistocene  is  held  to  correspond  to  the  early 
Eolithic  phase  designated  Reutelian,  whose  delimitation 
is  due  to  the  work  of  M.  Rutot,  who  devoted  long  years 
to  the  study  of  the  Pleistocene  deposits  of  the  river  valleys 
of  Belgium.  He  maintained  that  a  certain  thick  bed  of 
clay  that  occurs  in  the  Belgian  Lower  Pleistocene  repre- 
sents the  work  of  enormous  floods  that  followed  the  break- 
up of  the  second  (Mindelian)  and  most  severe  glacial 
phase  of  the  Pleistocene  :  it  is  held  to  correspond  to  the 
Chalky  Boulder  Clay  of  East  Anglia.  In  this  post- 
Mindelian  interglacial  period  he  placed  the  Mafflian, 
Mesvinian,  and  Strepyan  cultures,  all  of  them  Eolithic, 
the  last  of  which  preceded  the  Chellean  during  the  same 
phase.  After  the  Riss  glacial  phase  came  an  interglacial 
period  which  is  represented  in  Belgium  by  a  deposit  of 
fine  sand  and  clay  ('  ancient  loess  ')  :  this  probably 
corresponds  to  the  upper  loam  of  the  '  loo-foot '  terrace 
in  the  valley  of  the  Thames.  In  this  Riss-Wurmian 
interglacial  phase  are  found  implements  of  the  Acheulean 
stage  of  culture,  and  towards  its  close,  of  the  Mousterian 
culture,  which  reached  its  zenith  during  the  Wurmian 
glacial  phase.  This  was  in  turn  followed  by  the  Post- 


THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  MAN  57 

glacial  phase  during  which  great  thicknesses  of  '  recent 
loess '  were  accumulated :  these  are  synchronous  with 
the  Atirignacian  culture,  and  succeeded  by  loams  and 
brick  earth  that  correspond  to  the  Solutrean  and  Mag- 
dalenian  cultures.  More  particularly  the  Aurignacian  is 
generally  considered  to  synchronise  with  the  Achen 
oscillation,  and  the  Magdalenian  with  the  Buhl  glacial 
'  stadium '  of  some  20,000  years  ago.  It  ought  to  be  added, 
however,  that  recently  opinion  has  been  tending  towards 
a  regrouping  of  these  different  phases  which  would  relate 
them  to  two  principal  glacial  advances,  Giinz-Mindel  and 
Riss-Wurmian,  each  composed  of  several  oscillations. 
Of  these  the  former  was  on  a  much  more  extensive  scale. 
Under  this  rearrangement  the  Giinz-Mindel  interglacial 
phase  sinks  into  insignificance,  but  the  Mindel-Rissian 
interglaciation  becomes  increasingly  important.1 

It  may  be  remarked  at  this  point  that  the  varying 
surface  characters  pictured  in  the  words  '  tundras,  steppes, 
and  great  forests '  quoted  above,  can  be  taken  to  repre- 
sent definite  stages  in  the  amelioration  of  regions  that 
either  once  skirted  or  were  actually  under  the  ice-sheet  in 
Europe.  With  each  stage  were  associated  its  distinctive 
fauna  and  flora,  and  it  is  the  development  in  the  order 
named,  as  well  as  in  the  reverse  direction  as  the  climate 
changed  again  towards  another  glacial  phase,  that  also 
compels  the  recognition  of  long  periods  of  time  for  the 
replacement  by  one  another  of  the  corresponding  definite 
faunal  and  floral  series,  the  records  of  which  are  preserved 
in  the  interglacial  deposits.  It  is  not  necessary  to  sup- 
pose that  the  glacial  phases  were  characterised  by  unusual 
extremes  of  cold.  The  contrast  between  them  and  the 
interglacial  periods  lay  rather  in  the  shortened  summers 
and  lengthened  winters,  and  in  the  gradual  effect  of  the 
solidification  of  moisture  in  snow  and  ice  in  drying  the 
air  and  so  assisting  the  loss  by  radiation,  of  heat  derived 
from  the  sun.  With  the  natural  assumption  that  as  we 
proceed  farther  north  towards  the  main  source  of  flow  in 

1  Cf.  e.g.  Man,  vol.  xxii.  No.  5. 


58       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  Scandinavian  backbone,  we  are  less  likely  to  find 
clear  evidence  of  interglacial  periods,  nothing  occurs  to 
indicate  marked  divergence  in  any  region  from  the  general 
characters  of  the  Ice  Age  as  a  whole.  Professor  Geikie 
successfully  correlated  the  evidence  for  glacial  and  inter- 
glacial  phases  in  Great  Britain  with  the  corresponding 
evidence  from  the  Alps. 

Again,  the  slow  movements  of  elevation — these  secular 
land  oscillations — that  were  characteristic  on  the  whole 
of  preglacial  and  interglacial  periods  and  were  a  factor 
in  the  causation  of  glacial  phases,  necessarily  resulted  in 
readjustments  of  the  surface  lands  and  water,  which  had 
a  great  bearing  on  the  migration  of  plants  and  animals. 
Thus  we  may  think,  in  the  Giinz  and  even  as  late  as  the 
Wurmian  phase,  of  land  bridges  across  the  Mediterranean 
at  Gibraltar,  and  by  way  of  Southern  Italy  and  Sicily, 
which  definitely  connected  Europe  and  Africa  and  trans- 
formed the  Mediterranean  of  these  days  into  two  inland 
seas.  In  the  same  way  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  formed 
part  of  a  western  prolongation  of  the  continent  that  ran 
out  to  the  north-west  in  peninsular  fashion  beyond  Ice- 
land. The  larger  part  of  the  shallow  North  Sea  was  a 
plain  through  which  flowed  a  greater  Rhine,  receiving 
the  tribute  of  the  Elbe,  as  well  as  of  the  Thames,  the 
Forth,  and  other  rivers  of  the  East  Coast  of  Britain.  The 
area  of  the  English  Channel  formed  in  part  the  bed  and 
valley  of  a  great  river,  which,  with  the  Somme  and  Seine 
as  tributaries,  debouched  into  the  Atlantic  on  a  meridian 
of  longitude  to  the  west  of  Ireland.  It  should  also  not 
be  forgotten  that  the  North  European  rivers  of  these  days 
were  larger  than  their  modern  representatives,  since  they 
carried  off  the  drainage  from  higher  mountains  that  had 
not  in  the  beginning  of  the  Pleistocene  yet  undergone  the 
scouring  and  reducing  process  of  the  passage  of  an  ice- 
sheet  over  their  flanks.  Glacial  phases  were  apt  on  the 
whole  to  end  in  various  degrees  of  submergence  of  the  land, 
owing  in  part  to  the  enormous  weight  of  the  ice-masses. 

Once  again,  in  the  actual  delimitation  of  the  various 


?,  * it — i *          ,  ,« 


60       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

phases  of  the  Great  Ice  Age,  incalculable  assistance  is 
derived  from  the  fossil  remains  of  plants  and  animals 
found  in  the  deposits  that  are  associated  with  these 
phases.  The  more  completely  it  is  realised  how  close  is 
the  adaptation  of  distinctive  forms  of  life  to  a  definite 
environment,  the  more  reliability  can  be  placed  on  the 
deduction  of  conditions  from  the  presence  of  distinctive 
fossils.  The  associated  remains  in  a  stratum  of  what  are 
known  to  be  arctic  and  subarctic  types  can  confidently 
be  taken  to  be  complete  demonstration  of  the  conclusion 
suggested  by  other  indications,  that  the  stratum  in  ques- 
tion belongs  to  a  glacial  phase,  and  correspondingly  with 
regard  to  the  interglacial  phases.  Such  environmental 
change  meant  a  selective  process  which  could  be  avoided 
to  some  extent  by  migration,  but  which  in  the  case  of  the 
less  adaptable  forms — which  often  means  the  most 
specialised  and  adapted  forms — spelled  extinction.  New 
finds  in  previously  unstudied  deposits,  therefore,  can  be 
dated,  and  other  deductions  checked,  by  the  presence  or 
absence  in  them  of  characteristic  forms  whose  association 
with  well-marked  geological  stages  has  already  been 
determined.  Thus  it  is  found,  to  mention  but  a  few  ex- 
amples, that  forms  like  the  Arctic  Fox  (Canis  lagopus),  the 
Banded  Lemming  (Cuniculus  torquatus),  the  Obi  Lemming 
(My odes  obensis),  the  Wolverene  or  Glutton  (Gulo),  the 
Marmot  (Arctomys),  the  Reindeer  (Rangifer  tarandus), 
and  the  Musk-ox  (Ovibos  moschatus)  are  generally  associ- 
ated with  glacial  or  tundra  conditions,  as  may  also  be  the 
Woolly  Rhinoceros  (R.  tichorinus)  and  the  Mammoth 
(Elephas  primigemus],  which  are,  however,  in  addition 
found  under  steppe  conditions.  Forms  such  as  the 
Souslik  (Spermophilus),  the  Jerboa  (Alactaga),  the  Tailless 
Hare  (Lagomys),  the  Saiga  Antelope  (Saiga),  and  the 
Kiang  or  Wild  Ass  (Equus  hemionus)  are  characteristic  of 
steppe  conditions,  although  many  others,  such  as  the 
Wolf  (Canis  lupus]  and  Fox  (Canis  vulpes),  the  Brown 
Bear  (Ursus  arctos)  and  the  Wild  Boar  (Sus  scrofa),  which 
prefer  a  genial  climate,  are  found  associated  with  them. 


THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  MAN  61 

Finally,  the  Apes  and  Monkeys  (Primates),  Lion  (Felis 
led],  Leopard  (Felis  pardus),  Hippopotamus  (H.  am- 
phibius],  the  Broad-nosed  Rhinoceros  (R,  mercki),  various 
species  of  Elephant  (E.  antiquus,  meridionalis,  etc.),  and 
the  Spotted  Hyaena  (H.  crocuta]  definitely  favour  a  warm 
climate.  Closer  study  shows  that  in  a  peculiar  degree 
the  small  arctic  rodents  (forms  like  Myodes,  Lagomys, 
etc.),  the  Elephant,  Reindeer,  and  Horse  are  important  in 
connection  with  Pleistocene  comparative  chronology  : 1 
indeed,  for  a  long  time  the  three  main  periods  of  the 
Palaeolithic  Age  (Early,  Middle,  and  Late)  were  often 
known  as  the  Hippopotamus,  Mammoth,  and  Reindeer 
periods  respectively. 

The  blighting  and  impoverishing  effect  of  an  Ice  Age  as 
a  whole  upon  the  forms  of  life  that  struggled  under  and 
against  it  can  be  seen  by  a  comparison  of  the  fauna  and 
flora  of  the  Pleistocene  system  with  those  of  the  systems 
immediately  preceding  or  succeeding  it.  Thus  the  Plio- 
cene fauna  and  flora  of  Europe  were  rich  and  varied,  the 
latter  including  many  tree  forms  that  are  limited  to 
America  to-day.  The  climate  was  warm  and  genial  over 
a  continental  area  greater  than  that  of  the  Europe  of 
to-day,  Africa  and  Britain  being  joined  to  it  as  the  result 
of  the  gradual  elevation  that  was  a  factor  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  cold  of  the  Ice  Age.  Yet  there  was  a  tem- 
porary return  to  milder  conditions  after  the  first  sugges- 
tion of  the  approaching  Pleistocene,  before  the  conditions 
of  the  Giinz  phase  developed.  Generic  forms  like  the 
hyaena,  bear,  hippopotamus,  tapir,  rhinoceros,  and 
elephant  were  common  throughout  Europe  and  partly 
migrated  to  the  south  only  to  return  in  the  subsequent 
interglacial  period,  and  partly  were  thinned  out :  the 
flora  suffered  more  severely.  The  Mindel  glaciation, 
longer  and  more  relentless  in  its  effects  upon  the  fauna 
and  flora,  was  '  the  turning-point  in  the  development  of 
the  later  aspects  of  European  fauna.  It  was  a  time  of 

1  See  Prof.  R.  A.  S.  Macalister,  A  Text-book  of  European  Archaeology, 
vol.  i.  chap.  iii.  passim. 


62       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

deadly  slaughter.' l  The  Rissian  glaciation  was  a  period 
of  invasion  of  Central  Europe  by  a  definitely  arctic  fauna 
that  was  well  adapted  to  the  particular  tundra  conditions. 
The  reindeer  appears  wandering  as  far  south  as  Spain, 
together  with  the  woolly  rhinoceros,  mammoth,  wolverene, 
and  numerous  small  rodents.  The  cave  lion,  cave  bear, 
and  cave  hyaena  are  especially  distinctive.  It  is  in  the 
fauna  and  flora  of  the  interglacial  phases  that  the  gradual 
approximation  to  modern  conditions  is  best  marked. 
Towards  the  close  of  the  Riss-Wiirmian  interglacial  phase 
forms  like  the  broad-nosed  rhinoceros  (R.  mercki)  and 
the  straight-tusked  elephant  (E.  antiquus]  appear  for  the 
last  time.  The  Wiirmian  glacial  period  is  much  like 
the  Rissian  in  fauna  except  for  a  marked  increase  in  the 
numbers  of  reindeer.  The  mammoth  seems  to  have 
survived  in  Europe  until  the  Buhl  stadium,  and  the 
Irish  elk  (Cervus  giganteus)  until  the  Gschnitz.  At  this 
time  also  the  reindeer  withdrew  from  Central  Europe 
to  the  north.  The  European  Neolithic  fauna  and  flora 
differ  little  from  those  of  to-day,  which  in  their 
richness  and  variety  contrast  favourably  with  those  of 
Pleistocene  times. 

The  probability  of  a  great  antiquity  for  man  is  further 
suggested  as  the  result  of  certain  theoretical  considera- 
tions. The  most  cursory  physical  examination  of  the 
three  principal  modern  varieties  of  the  human  species 
serves  to  disclose  a  very  great  range  of  variation.  The 
typical  negro  and  white  man  are  separated  by  marked 
physical  characteristics,  yet  inasmuch  as  they  are  both 
specialised  forms  neither  can  be  said  to  represent  the 
ancestral  form.  Possibly  the  nearest  modern  representa- 
tive of  such  a  primitive  stock — although  not  therefore  to  be 
considered  as  a  contemporary  ancestor — is  the  Australian 
aboriginal.  He  combines  characters  of  the  negro  and  of 
the  white  man,  and  at  the  same  time  has  certain  charac- 
teristics that  recall  the  mid-Palaeolithic  (Mousterian  or 
Neanderthal)  type.  Taking  him  for  the  moment  as  a 

1  Macalister,  op.  cit.  p.  89. 


THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  MAN  63 

theoretical  starting-point,  we  should  then  have  to  find 
an  answer  to  the  question,  How  long  must  it  have  taken 
for  the  modern  negro  and  modern  white  man  to  evolve 
from  such  a  common  ancestor  ?  Now  definite  data  are 
at  hand  to  assist  in  the  solution  of  this  problem.  Pro- 
fessor Elliot  Smith  had  occasion  to  study  certain  mummi- 
fied Egyptian  remains,  dynastic  and  predynastic — a 
succession  covering  some  6000  years  at  least.  He  and 
his  fellow-workers  found  '  evidence  of  an  infiltration  of 
foreign  blood  both  from  the  north  and  from  the  south ; 
they  noted  minor  alterations  in  the  configuration  of  the 
head  and  in  the  state  of  the  teeth  and  jaws,  but  they 
could  not  say  that  the  men  at  the  end  of  that  period  were 
in  any  respect  a  higher  or  more  specialised  type  than 
the  inhabitants  of  the  Nile  Valley  at  the  beginning  of  that 
period.' l  When  to  this  we  add  the  fact  of  the  general 
similarity  of  Neolithic  man,  so  far  as  he  is  known,  to  the 
man  of  to-day,  we  realise  that  a  process  of  evolution 
such  as  has  been  sketched  above  requires  time.  Sir 
Arthur  Keith  thinks  that  it  took  the  whole  length  of  the 
Pleistocene — a  period  whose  duration  he  variously  esti- 
mates from  300,000  to  500,000  years.2  '  I  am  thus 
postulating/  he  adds,  '  in  order  to  explain  the  differentia- 
tion and  distribution  of  modern  races,  that  mankind,  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Pleistocene  period,  had  reached  a 
physical  condition  which  has  its  best  modern  representa- 
tion in  the  aborigines  of  Australia.' 8  But  if,  further, 
as  he  believes,  human  fossil  remains  from  the  Lower  and 
Middle  Pleistocene  represent  in  more  than  one  instance 
distinct  species  of  the  human  race,  if  indeed  some  of  the 
former  are  actually  of  Pliocene  age,  then  his  conclusion 
is  conceivable  that '  man  had  reached  the  human  standard 
in  size  of  brain  by  the  commencement  of  the  Pliocene 
period  ...  a  period  of  about  one  million  years '  ago.4 

1  Prof.  Arthur  Keith, '  Modern  Problems  relating  to  tho  Antiquity  of 
Man,'  B.  A.  Report,  1912,  p.  755. 

1  The  Antiquity  of  Man,  pp.  226,  308,  500. 

1  B.  A.  Report,  1912,  p.  756.  «  The  Antiquity  of  Man,  p.  510. 


RECENT  & 


*oo,ooo  years  : 


PLIOCENE 

spoof? 
500,000  years 


MIOCENE 
f  * 


900,000  years 


OL1GOCENE      / 
I2JOOO  ft          < 
12  OOP  00  years 


EOCENE 
12.000  r I 

U  00,000  years'; 


ON 


FlG.  5. — Suggested  genealogical  tree  of  man  and  the  anthropoid  apes. 
(From  Keith's  Antiquity  of  Man.     By  permission.) 

P«£t  65. 


THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  MAN  65 

Whether  the  facts  actually  substantiate  so  extreme  a 
presumption  is  another  matter. 

The  same  theoretical  conclusion  of  a  great  antiquity 
for  man  is  once  again  suggested  by  the  data  bearing  on 
the  history  of  the  anthropoid  apes,  the  degree  of  whose 
relation  to  man  is  now  fairly  well  established.  The 
existence  of  such  fossils  as  Pliopithecus  (antiquus),  most 
probably  a  gibbon,  represented  by  upper  and  lower  jaws 
from  various  Miocene  deposits  in  Europe  ;  Pliohylobates, 
almost  certainly  a  gibbon,  of  which  the  remains,  com- 
prising a  single  femur  and  portions  of  three  mandibles, 
have  been  found  in  the  Miocene  of  France  and  Germany  ; 
Dryoptthecus  (fontani),  probably  ancestral  to  the  gorilla 
or  orang,  represented  by  about  four  mandibles  and  a 
humerus  from  Upper  Miocene  strata  of  France  (S. 
Gaudens)  and  three  forms  from  the  Siwalik  Miocene  of 
N.W.  India f,  Palaeopithecus  sivalensis,  probably  related 
to  both  chimpanzee  and  orang,  represented  by  a  frag- 
mentary upper  j  aw,  from  the  Upper  Miocene  in  N.W.  India ; 
and,  most  interesting  of  all,  Sivapithecus  from  the  same 
deposit,  recognised  by  several  authorities  as  closer  to 
man's  ancestral  stock  than  any  other  ape — all  show  that 
we  have  to  go  back  very  early  to  find  the  form  ancestral 
to  them  and  man.  The  data  are  still  much  too  scanty 
to  afford  any  completely  satisfactory  account  of  the 
derivative  relationship  of  these  remains  ;  nevertheless,  it 
is  clear  that  if  we  wish  to  represent  to  ourselves  the  period 
at  which  the  Primate  forms  ancestral  to  man  branched 
off  from  the  stock  common  to  him  and  the  modern 
anthropoid  apes,  we  have  to  place  it  previous  to  the 
earliest  known  forms  that  could  be  thought  of  as  ancestral 
to  any  of  the  Simiidae.  Now,  to  quote  again  from  Sir 
Arthur  Keith,  '  the  earliest  traces  we  have  discovered  as 
yet  were  described  by  Dr.  Max  Schlosser  in  1910.  In 
the  very  oldest  Oligocene  formation  of  the  Fayoum, 
Egypt,  the  teeth  and  jaws  of  three  Primates  were  dis- 
covered. Two  of  these  are  allied  to  the  South  American 
apes,  the  other  is  a  forerunner  of  the  gibbons.  These 
E 


66       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Fayoum  fossils  are  of  the  highest  importance  to  the 
solution  of  our  problem.  Their  discovery  assures  us  that 
at  such  an  early  date  in  the  evolution  of  mammals  the 
South  American  apes  and  the  pro-gibbons  were  already 
in  existence.  They  are  highly  evolved  forms,  and  it  is 
not  unlikely  that  they  appeared  at  a  much  earlier  date. 
.  .  .  Here,  then,  we  have  the  assurance  that  an  animal 
which  springs  closely  from  the  stock  giving  rise  to  man 
has  come  down  to  us  with  but  little  change  through  the 
leagues  of  time  marked  by  the  Miocene,  Pliocene,  and 
Pleistocene  formations.  By  the  middle  of  the  Miocene 
we  know  the  great  anthropoids  were  in  existence  ;  it  is 
most  unlikely  that  the  traces  we  have  discovered  mark 
their  first  appearance.  With  the  evolution  of  the  great 
anthropoids  the  appearance  of  a  human  ancestry  as  a 
separate  stock  is  possible.  From  every  point  of  view  it 
is  most  probable  that  the  human  stock  became  differenti- 
ated at  the  same  time  as  the  great  anthropoids.  On  the 
evidence  afforded  by  our  very  imperfect  knowledge  of 
fossil  forms  of  apes,  we  are  justified  in  assuming  that  a 
very  primitive  form  of  man  may  have  come  into  existence 
during  the  Miocene  period — at  the  very  latest  during  the 
early  part  of  the  Pliocene/  x  It  is  the  same  extreme 
view  reached  along  a  slightly  different  line,  although  Sir 
Arthur,  like  every  earnest  gold-seeker,  pegs  out  a  larger 
claim  than  can  be  worked  in  the  meantime,  in  the  hope 
that  it  may  contain  something,  or  because  he  thinks  it 
will  contain  something,  rewarding.  Nevertheless,  it  is 
clear  that  the  general  trend  of  theoretical  argument  calls 
for  great  human  antiquity. 

1  B.  A.  Report,  1912,  pp.  756,  757. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN 

IN  endeavouring  to  trace  more  exactly  the  history  of  the 
relationship  of  man  to  the  anthropoid  apes,  and  even  in 
attempting  to  postulate  those  earlier  stages  in  the  process 
of  evolution  by  which  the  ancestral  Primates  came  into 
being,  we  are  not  entirely  in  the  dark.  That  which  is 
most  distinctive  of  man  is  in  some  kind  of  a  way  con- 
nected with  his  brain  structure  and  capacity,  and  accord- 
ingly it  is  probable  that  the  most  fruitful  line  to  pursue 
will  be  that  which  is  marked  out  by  increasing  complexity 
in  cerebral  development.  No  one  has  followed  this  trail 
more  closely  than  Professor  Elliot  Smith,  upon  whose 
work  the  immediately  following  paragraphs  are  based.1 

Now  that  which  distinguishes  mammals  from  lower 
vertebrates,  e.g.  reptiles  and  fish,  is  the  fact  that  they  are 
able  to  unify,  correlate,  record,  and  recollect  sensory  im- 
pressions from  all  the  senses  in  a  way  and  to  a  degree 
which  is  not  true  of  these  lower  forms.  Their  lives  are 
therefore  more  of  a  whole — in  a  less  degree  bundles  of 
disconnected  moments — than  is  the  case  with  the  lower 
vertebrates.  They  are  more  active  and  alert,  mentally 
and  physically,  and  are  better  learners.  The  graduated 
advance  upon  the  reptiles  is  clear,  whose  dominant  sense 
is  smell,  with  which  they  can  to  some  extent  correlate 
taste,  and  this  progress  continues  within  the  class  of  the 
Mammalia.  It  is  connected  with  the  development  of  the 
cerebral  cortex  proper,  or  neopallium,  as  Professor  Elliot 

1  Cf.  especially  B.  A.  Report,  1912,  pp.  575-598;  Morison  Lectures, 
Royal  College  of  Physicians,  Edinburgh,  1922.  The  same  point  of 
view  is  adopted  by  F.  Wood  Jones  in  his  Arboreal  Man. 

if 


68       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Smith  terms  this  area.  { The  consciousness  which  resides, 
so  to  speak,  in  this  neopallium,  and  is  fed  by  the  continual 
stream  of  sensory  impressions  pouring  into  it  and  awaken- 
ing memories  of  past  sensations,  can  express  itself  directly 
in  the  behaviour  of  the  animal  through  the  intermediation 
of  a  part  of  the  neopallium  itself,  the  so-called  motor 
area,  which  is  not  only  kept  in  intimate  relation  with  the 
muscles,  tendons,  and  skin  by  sensory  impressions,  but 
controls  the  voluntary  responses  of  the  muscles  of  the 
opposite  side  of  the  body.' l  This  function  of  regulating 
skilled  movements  of  the  whole  body,  i.e.  '  such  actions 
as  are  possible  only  when  there  is  a  highly  developed 
tactile  information-bureau  to  render  nicely  adjusted 
movements  possible,'  2  has  been  associated  with  the  neo- 
pallium from  its  earliest  appearance. 

Amongst  the  mammalian  order  of  Insectivora  (moles, 
hedgehogs,  and  shrews)  there  is  a  very  ancient  and 
generalised  family  of  lively,  agile,  squirrel-like  creatures, 
the  Tupaiidae  or  tree-shrews,  which  show  points  of  kin- 
ship in  habits  and  structure  with  the  most  primitive  of 
the  Lemurs,  Tarsius  or  the  Spectral  Tarsier.3  Particularly 
on  the  strength  of  the  relationships  hi  brain  structure, 
Professor  Elliot  Smith  maintains  that  '  the  brain  of  the 
Primates  was  derived  from  some  Insectivore-like  type, 
the  cerebral  hemispheres  of  which  attained  a  precocious 
development,'  and  inasmuch  as  '  Tarsius  possesses  at  once 
the  most  generalised  and  the  most  pithecoid  brain  of  all 
the  Lemuroidea,'  4  lemurs  and  apes  were  certainly  de- 
rived from  a  common  stem.  Now  in  the  case  of  primitive 
mammals  the  sense  of  smell,  both  in  connection  with  the 
search  for  food  and  recognition  of  friend  or  foe,  was 
dominant,  and  the  olfactory  lobes  were  particularly  well 
developed,  But  in  arboreal  life  there  are  distinct  limita- 

1  Sectional  Presidential  Address,  B.  A.  Report,  1912,  p.  581. 

«  Prof.  G.  Elliot  Smith,  'On  the  Origin  of  Mammals,'  B.  A.  Report, 
1911,  p.  427. 

»  For  the  evidence,  cf.  W.  K.  Gregory,  The  Orders  of  Mammals, 
pp.  268-280. 

4  Quoted  in  Gregory,  op.  cit.  p.  500. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN  69 

tions  to  the  value  of  the  sense  of  smell,  and  a  greater 
necessity  for  the  development  of  sight  and  touch  and 
hearing.  Accordingly  we  find  in  arboreal  forms  like  the 
tree-shrew  a  reduction  in  the  olfactory  regions  of  the 
brain,  and  a  greater  development  of  the  areas  in  the  neo- 
pallium  concerned  with  sight,  touch,  hearing,  and  motor 
functions,  as  also  with  the  unifying  of  the  effects  of  the 
different  impressions  passing  into  the  brain  through  the 
senses.  That  is  to  say,  there  is  less  of  sensory  specialisa- 
tion and  more  of  a  general  balance  in  relation  to  the 
physical  environment  which  reacts  on  the  body  as  a 
whole,  and  leaves  these  creatures  free  to  develop  that 
agility  which  was  and  is  a  dominant  survival  factor  in 
mammalian  arboreal  life.  Further,  towards  the  close  of 
the  Cretaceous  period,  some  shrew-like  animal,  suggestive 
of  Tarsius,  freed  from  the  domination  of  the  sense  of 
smell  through  the  continued  reduction  of  the  olfactory 
lobes  in  reaction  to  the  new  environment,  developed  to  a 
very  remarkable  degree  the  sense  of  vision,  aided  by  the 
circumstance  that  with  the  shortening  of  the  snout  and 
the  flattening  of  the  face,  the  eyes  were  brought  from  the 
sides  to  the  front  of  the  head,  so  that  the  creature  was 
able  to  look  straight  ahead.  Images  of  the  same  object 
were  impressed  upon  both  eyes,  and  a  wide  range  of  co- 
ordinated movement  was  now  possible.  In  the  case  of 
the  diminutive  Tarsius,  sight  predominates  over  smell, 
and  in  the  ancestral  history  of  man  this  dominance  first 
came  into  existence  at  this  Tarsian  stage.  But  with  this 
development  of  sight  went  a  corresponding  development 
of  the  sense  of  touch,  for  better  vision  meant  heightened 
curiosity  and  a  quickened  desire  to  examine :  the  eyes 
could  also  now  better  guide  the  fore-limbs,  and  so  aid  in 
the  establishment  of  more  precise  and  skilled  movements. 
This  meant  the  gradual  replacement  of  the  jaw  by  the 
hands  as  instruments  of  prehension.  Accordingly,  not 
merely  is  there  a  marked  increase  in  the  visual  area  of 
the  cerebral  cortex,  but  also  in  the  tactile,  motor,  and 
kinaesthetic  areas,  all  of  which  sensibilities  had  been 


70       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

developed.  A  whole  new  range  of  increased  adaptation 
was  opened  up  by  the  new  correlated  powers  of  hand  and 
eye.  Above  all,  this  enhanced  curiosity  developed  an 
organ  of  attention,  so  to  speak — an  area  associated  with 
the  co-ordination  of  the  activities  of  the  neopallium  or 
cerebral  cortex  as  a  whole,  so  as  to  guide  the  senses  and 
secure  the  harmonious  concentrated  action  of  the  muscles 
in  carrying  out  some  particular  skilled  movement.  In 
this  we  find  the  earliest  indications  of  what  develops  into 
the  prefrontal  area  of  the  human  brain,  with  which  are 
associated  the  faculty  of  attention  and  the  co-ordination 
of  mental  processes. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  attempt  to  trace  the  history  or 
migrations  of  the  primitive  Tarsius-like  forms  or  the 
related  lemurs  proper.  The  palaeontological  evidence 
suggests  the  evolution  of  some  of  the  former  into  true 
monkeys  of  a  very  primitive  Platyrrhine  type  in  North 
America  during  Early  Eocene  days.  Evidence  of 
Catarrhine  monkeys  has  been  found  in  the  Lower  Oligo- 
cene  of  Egypt,1  and  by  the  Miocene,  the  Catarrhine 
Anthropoid  Apes  are  known  in  Europe.  Now  the  weight 
of  the  Platyrrhine  marmoset's  brain  is  some  four  or  five 
times  that  of  the  Tarsian  brain.  This  is  in  part  due  to  the 
larger  size  of  the  animal  which  exposes  it  to  more  dangers, 
but  the  development  is  noticeable  along  the  same  main 
lines.  There  is  greater  development  and  specialisation 
in  the  motor  area  of  the  cortex,  corresponding  to  in- 
creased power  of  skilled  movement.  The  hands  are  now 
used  in  place  of  the  jaws  for  taking  up  food,  and  there  is 
a  marked  development  of  the  tactile  areas  in  the  brain 
corresponding  to  this  growing  use  of  the  hands  for  inquiry 
and  experiment  upon  the  outside  world.  In  climbing, 
also,  the  hind-limbs  tend  to  become  organs  of  support, 
while  the  creature  reaches  out  or  feels  around  with  its 
fore-limbs.  In  particular,  Professor  Elliot  Smith  con- 
siders that  the  acquisition  of  stereoscopic  vision,  which 
had  not  been  developed  at  the  Tarsian  stage,  was  of 
*  Cf.  P.  65. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN  71 

superlative  importance,  as  bringing  the  organism  into 
new  relations  to  the  environment  that  further  stimulated 
curiosity  and  inquiry,  and  so,  advance.  This  added 
power  involved  the  development  in  the  brain  of  a  compli- 
cated area  where  the  conjugate  movement  of  the  eyes 
was  more  exactly  regulated,  and  the  range  of  such  move- 
ments extended  so  as  to  bring  about  convergence  and 
more  perfect  focussing  of  the  eyes  upon  objects  hi  the 
field  of  vision.  The  mere  act  of  focussing  the  eyes  on 
an  object  for  such  examination  involved  the  beginnings 
of  that  power  of  attention  and  concentration  that  is 
necessary  for  the  development  of  mind  itself.  More  than 
ever  as  the  result  of  various  structural  modifications  and 
developments,  the  eye  became  the  principal  avenue  of 
sensory  impression,  and  vision  the  guiding  sense.  Now 
for  the  first  time  the  creature  saw  in  a  large  degree  as 
man  sees,  and  could  appreciate  as  never  before  size  and 
form,  colour  and  texture,  spatial  position  and  relation. 
The  handling  of  objects,  interest  in  which  was  evoked  by 
this  apparently  new  revelation  or  unveiling  of  the  Environ- 
ment— the  change,  however,  really  being,  as  in  all  critical 
advances,  in  the  beholder — could  not  fail  to  result  in 
greater  manipulative  finger  power,  and  increased  plasticity 
of  touch.  Professor  Elliot  Smith  draws  attention  to  the 
fact  that  no  forms  lower  than  apes  handle  and  nurse 
their  babies.  Further,  there  is  an  appreciable  increase 
hi  the  size  of  the  auditory  area.  Things  had  become 
more  meaningful  and  provocative  of  interest,  which  began 
to  be  increasingly  expressed  by  sounds  uttered  by  the 
voice.  This  sound-symbolism,  which  eventually  de- 
veloped into  speech,  produced  a  complementary  develop- 
ment of  the  auditory  region  of  the  cortex.  In  those 
forms  especially,  however,  that  evolved  into  the  South 
American  monkeys  proper,  the  line  of  advance  through 
sight  was  not  maintained.  A  tendency  developed  in  the 
gloom  of  the  forests  to  trust  rather  to  hearing,  and  to 
development  of  the  tail  as  a  prehensile  organ  in  place 
of  the  hands.  The  greater  the  degree  of  specialisation 


72       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

or  adaptation  to  a  specific  physical  environment,  the 
greater  has  always  been  the  risk  of  failure  to  advance. 

By  whatever  route  the  New  World  Platyrrhine  ances- 
tors of  the  later  Catarrhine  or  Old  World  Apes  reached 
their  new  habitat — for  the  details  of  this  migration  are 
still  a  subject  of  debate — the  mere  fact  that  they  moved 
out  from  the  ancestral  home,  letting  new  environmental 
stimuli  play  upon  their  freshly-acquired  powers,  served 
to  keep  them  plastic  and  free  to  respond  to  still  newer 
stimuli.  At  the  same  time — for  the  story  has  been  the 
same  all  along — some  of  the  forms  fell  away  from  the 
higher  status  now  established.  The  baboons,  for 
example,  have  clearly  retrograded  in  their  definite  return 
to  quadrupedal  progression.  In  other  Catarrhine  forms 
the  Tarsian  tendency  towards  the  erect  posture,  with  all 
the  complicated  series  of  structural  changes  that  this 
involved,  was  persisted  in,  and  the  Anthropoid  Apes 
began  to  come  into  existence.  The  ancestral  gibbons 
probably  broke  off  about  this  stage,  and  the  still  greater 
development  in  the  size  and  specialisation  of  the  motor 
and  prefrontal  areas  of  the  gibbon  brain  is  correlated 
not  merely  with  the  marked  increase  in  range  of  skilled 
movement  and  agility,  but  particularly  with  that  greater 
discriminative  and  manipulative  power  in  the  fingers, 
which  made  the  fore-limb  less  and  less  a  mere  organ  of 
progression,  and  increasingly  an  instrument  of  prehension 
and  investigation.  Further,  a  marked  increase  in  the 
parietal  or  '  association '  area  of  the  cortex,  which  lies 
between  the  sensory,  auditory,  and  visual  areas,  meant 
growing  ability  to  store  the  records  of  states  of  conscious- 
ness compounded  of  various  sensory  impressions — regis- 
tered experience — which  in  its  turn  resulted  in  greater 
success  in  skilled  movements  of  the  fore-limbs,  and  so 
greater  inducement  to  adopt  the  upright  attitude.  The 
orang,  chimpanzee,  and  gorilla  branched  off  later. 

Now  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Homosimius, 
as  this  still  theoretical  ancestral  form  is  conveniently 
termed,  was  other  than  the  result  of  a  continuation  of 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN  73 

the  same  series  of  changes  as  had  successively  produced 
the  earlier  forms.  All  of  the  facts  tend  to  indicate  that 
the  differentiation  of  the  humanoid  stock  was  a  Tertiary 
event,  possibly  contemporaneous  in  a  very  general  way 
with  the  differentiation  of  the  great  Anthropoids,  though 
subsequent  almost  certainly  to  the  separation  of  the 
gibbons.  Data  so  definitely  linking  man  with  the 
Anthropoid  Apes  in  a  community  of  origin  tend  to 
emphasise  the  importance  of  this  arboreal  phase,  as  well 
as  stimulate  interest  as  to  the  circumstances  which  most 
probably  brought  it  to  a  close.  The  adoption  of  the  semi- 
erect  position  allowed  greater  freedom  of  movement  of 
the  fore-limbs  in  all  directions,  and  conditioned  the  loss 
of  the  tail.  As  Wood  Jones  puts  it,  '  the  human  stock 
sat  up  before  it  stood,' 1  just  as  to-day  the  child  sits  up 
before  it  stands.  Again,  in  relation  to  climbing,  arboreal 
life  offered  ample  scope  for  the  development  of  hand 
and  arm  in  prilling  and  holding,  and  of  leg  and  foot  in 
supporting,  balancing,  and  progressing.  In  Wood  Jones' 
terse  phrase,  '  arboreal  uprightness  preceded  terrestrial 
uprightness.'  a  In  relation  to  springing  from  one  branch 
to  another,  arboreal  life  gave  occasion  for  the  judging  of 
distances,  the  estimating  of  the  strength  of  branches,  and 
the  use  of  the  hand  in  grasping.  Such  a  combination  of 
activities  must,  as  we  have  seen,  have  exerted  a  great 
influence  on  the  development  of  the  higher  brain  centres. 
One  fatal  difference  between  the  ancestral  Anthropoids 
and  the  human  ancestral  form  was  that  the  former 
became  too  much  adapted  to  arboreal  life,  conforming 
entirely  to  the  immediate  environment.  The  gorilla  and 
other  Anthropoids,  which  separated  off  in  Miocene  days, 
show  in  each  case  more  specialisation  of  structure  than 
man.  In  the  case  of  Homosimius,  the  adaptation  was 
not  so  extreme — it  was  a  case  '  of  successful  minimal 
adaptive  specialisation  ' 8 — with  the  result  that  the  way 
remained  open  to  the  ground,  and  a  new  environment. 

1  op.  dt.  p.  224.  •  op.  cit.  p.  6. 

•  F.  Wood  Jones,  op.  cit.  p.  212. 


74       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

In  body  and  fore-limb  alike  he  retained  more  of  the 
primitive  plasticity :  man  alone  of  all  living  forms  has 
never  adopted  any  limiting  protective  adaptation  either 
of  structure  or  manner  of  life.  At  the  same  time,  it  is 
precarious  to  single  out  any  one  factor  in  this  process  of 
advance  and  describe  it  as  the  cause  thereof.  What  we 
note  at  this  stage  are  stimuli  from  the  environment,  as 
the  result  of  some  new  relation  to  it,  acting  upon  the 
brain,  which  responds  in  experimental  movements  par- 
ticularly of  the  fore-limbs,  directed  to  establishing  some 
fresh  understanding  with  some  part  of,  or  object  in,  the 
environment.  The  knowledge  thus  acquired  leads  to 
fresh  experimentation,  which  in  turn  means  further 
practice  in  skilled  movements.  There  is  thus  a  mutual 
reaction,  one  upon  the  other,  of  erectness,  use  of  the  hands, 
and  brain  development.  All  this  is  seen  in  the  parallel 
development  of  the  prefrontal  and  motor  areas  of  the 
brain,  the  former  being  especially  concerned  with  control 
over  the  functions  of  the  cortex  as  a  whole.  But  there  is 
also  a  further  development  of  what  has  been  already  re- 
ferred to  in  the  case  of  the  gibbon,  viz.  a  corresponding 
growth  of  the  parietal  region  of  the  cortex,  with  which  is 
associated  the  registration  of  the  states  of  consciousness 
composed  of  the  blended  and  recorded  sensory  impres- 
sions, or,  in  other  words,  low-grade  memory  of  experience. 
The  advance  has  been  in  some  way  fundamentally  associ- 
ated with  increasing  growth  and  specialisation  of  the 
brain,  especially  of  the  prefrontal  and  temporo-parietal 
and  central  areas,  which  are  connected  with  attention 
and  the  control  of  the  psychical  activities  of  the  cortex, 
the  correlation  of  cause  and  effect,  and  the  memories  of 
past  actions,  respectively.  In  terms  of  a  later  chapter  l 
the  Anthropoids,  having  less  ability  to  anticipate  and 
think,  and  being  compelled  to  respond  more  immediately 
to  the  environmental  stimuli,  under  the  continuous  stream 
of  sensory  impressions  which,  so  to  speak,  overflow  the 
channels  of  their  less-developed  brains,  are  not  so  free  as 

1  Chap.  xi. 


&***,? 


, 


'to>vf< 

IKSRg® 


**>*   \ 


. 


x">  —  -~~ 

FIG.  6.— Evolution  of  the  brain.  Outlines  (side  view)  of  typical  human 
and  pre-human  brains,  showing  the  early  development  of  the  posterior 
portions  of  the  brains,  and  the  relatively  late  development  of  the  anterior 
portions,  the  seat  of  the  higher  mental  faculties.  (From  H.  F.  Osborn's 
Men  of  Ike  Old  Stone  Age.) 

Pagt  76. 


76       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

man.  The  content  of  man's  experience  is  so  enriched  and 
his  memory  so  developed  that  he  can  foresee  to  some 
extent  the  consequences  of  his  actions  and  deliberate 
before  he  makes  response,  and  if  necessary  modify  that 
response  in  the  light  of  past  experience.  According  to 
Elliot  Smith,1  '  In  the  course  of  evolution  of  the  human 
brain  there  is  added  to  this  cortex  of  man's  Simian  pro- 
genitor a  mass  of  tissue,  roughly,  about  five  hundred  cubic 
centimetres,  bigger  than  the  whole  of  the  gorilla's  brain  ; 
and  as  the  sensory  areas  of  the  human  brain  are  practically 
equal  to  those  of  the  gorilla,  all  this  enormous  increase 
goes  to  swell  the  dimensions  of  those  parts  of  the  cortex 
which  do  not  receive  sensory  impressions  directly,'  i.e. 
the  association  areas,  which  are  concerned  with  experience 
and  the  influencing  of  behaviour,  and  the  higher  reaches 
of  the  mind  generally.  Particularly  is  this  development 
marked  in  the  prefrontal  region,  producing  the  forehead 
of  modern  man. 

In  attempting  to  understand  more  exactly  the  causes 
that  brought  the  arboreal  phase  of  ancestral  human  life 
to  a  close,  we  find  the  stimulus  to  progress  once  again  in 
the  changing  Environment  and  the  developed  power  of 
response  to  change.  The  fact  that  fossil  remains  of 
primitive  representatives  or  relatives  of  the  modern 
Simiidan  families  have  been  found  in  the  Miocene  of 
Central  Asia  tends  to  suggest  that  either  on  the  Iranian 
plateau  or  somewhere  to  the  north-east  of  it,  in  the 
western  section  of  the  plateau  of  Thibet,  was  a,  if  not  the, 
locus  where  the  descent  to  the  ground — that  first  fall  to 
rise — actually  took  place.  While  the  opening  of  the 
Tertiary  Era  in  Europe  was  a  period  of  warm  and  equable 
climate,  there  is  evidence  that  it  became  drier  and  cooler 
as  the  Eocene  passed  into  the  Miocene.  Similarly  in 
Central  Asia,  of  which  continent  Europe  is  after  all,  in  a 
geographical,  zoological,  and  anthropological  respect, 
simply  the  western  promontory  or  extension,  and  with 
which  for  that  matter  America  and  Australia  have  had 

1  B.  A.  Report,  1912,  p.  594. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN  77 

direct  land  connections  at  different  periods,  a  lowering  of 
the  temperature  and  growing  aridity  accompanied  that  slow 
process  of  continental  uplift  during  the  Miocene,  which  in 
particular  brought  the  Himalayas  into  existence  at  much 
the  same  time  as  the  Western  Alps.  There  was  growth 
in  the  continental  areas  which  must  have  occasioned  pro- 
found changes  in  the  character  of  the  areas  that  had  been 
the  haunts  of  anthropoid  forms.  Inevitably,  forests  were 
largely  transformed  into  steppe  regions  and  grassy  plains, 
as  the  new  mountain  ranges  shut  off  moisture-bearing 
winds  from  reduced  ocean  surfaces.  As  a  result  of  the 
continued  lowering  of  the  temperature  and  the  increasing 
aridity  which  became  more  marked  with  the  advance  of 
the  Pliocene,  the  character  of  the  vegetation  further 
changed ;  the  fruit  trees  that  supported  anthropoid  life 
became  scarcer.  Thus  the  arboreal  anthropoids  were 
faced  with  three  possibilities — migration,  change  of  life 
habits,  or  extinction.  The  first  was  the  method  adopted 
by  the  highly-specialised  Anthropoid  Apes.  They  tended 
to  move  southwards,  seeking  regions  of  greater  warmth 
and  necessary  food  supply.  Facilitated  by  the  land 
bridges  that  were  one  particular  result  of  the  general 
phase  of  elevation  that  lasted  through  Late  Pliocene  and 
Early  Pleistocene  time,  gibbons  now  ranged  throughout 
a  greater  South-East  Asia,  and  the  orang  penetrated  as 
far  as  Borneo,  by  way  of  a  larger  Malay  Peninsula,  com- 
prising the  present  islands  of  Sumatra  and  Java  as  well. 
The  chimpanzee  and  gorilla  gradually  moved  south- 
west into  Africa.  In  either  case  the  route  offered  no 
insuperable  difficulties,  and  lay  through  regions  where  the 
climate  was  milder  and  food  more  abundant  than  in  the 
harsher  and  drier  regions  to  the  north,  with  their  reduced 
forest  areas  and  food  supplies,  out  of  which  the  Anthro- 
poids were  being  thus  driven.  Towards  the  west,  the 
land  bridges  at  the  Dardanelles,  and  across  the  Mediter- 
ranean at  Gibraltar  and  by  way  of  Sicily  into  Italy,  pro- 
vided additional  routes  of  egress  and  ingress  into  Europe, 
which  if  not  followed  at  this  particular  stage6by  the  Apes 


78       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

owing  to  climatic  conditions,  were  still  of  service  to  man 
very  soon  after. 

The  second  method,  that  of  leaving  the  trees  and 
seeking  new  food  supplies,  such  as  roots  and  shoots  and 
small  mammals,  on  the  ground,  by  river  courses  and 
lakes,  or  in  thickets,  was  a  desperate  and  hazardous 
adventure  for  arboreal  forms  during  a  period  which  was 
in  many  respects  the  zenith  of  mammalian  carnivorous 
life.  But  once  the  footing  became  more  secure,  it  meant 
entrance  into  a  new  Environment,  which  with  its  challeng- 
ing stimuli  and  beckonings  resulted  in  further  mental 
advance.  Homosimius  was  still  more  ape  than  man, 
with  long  arms  and  short  legs,  imperfect  adaptation  to 
the  upright  attitude,  with  heavy  eyebrows,  retreating 
forehead,  and  projecting  muzzle,  but  with  possibilities 
that  were  henceforth  his  alone.  Comparatively  defence- 
less, he  was  gregarious,  and  the  homosimian  pack  began 
to  be  a  force  in  the  world  of  living  things. 

In  an  interesting,  though  unjustifiably  pessimistic, 
work  entitled  The  Origin  of  Man  and  of  Ms  Superstitions, 
Professor  Carveth  Read  urges  the  importance  of  the 
adoption  of  the  hunting  habit,  which  becomes  markedly 
characteristic  in  Palaeolithic  Man,  and  of  the  change 
from  a  frugivorous  to  a  flesh-diet  as  the  one  operative 
cause  in  the  development  of  the  distinctively  human  line 
amongst  the  various  anthropoid  groups.  Modern  man 
is  certainly  omnivorous,  and  the  supplementing  of  the 
vanishing  arboreal  means  of  subsistence  by  the  permanent 
descent  to  solid  earth  and  the  search  there  for  fruits  and 
roots  and  young  shoots,  must  have  been  further  modified 
at  a  very  early  stage  by  the  inclusion  of  animal  food, 
possibly  under  the  stimulus  of  famine.  None  of  the 
Simiidae  appear  to  be  strictly  vegetarian,  with  the 
exception  of  the  orang,  so  that  this  new  phase  was  but 
an  extension  of  an  already  familiar  habit.  On  the  other 
hand,  some  of  the  qualities  undoubtedly  developed  in 
connection  with  the  '  pack '  life  which  Professor  Read 
describes,  must  at  any  rate  in  the  earliest  stages  have  at 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN  79 

times  concerned  man  the  hunted,  almost  as  much  as  man 
the  hunter.  Gregariousness  is  a  sound  means  of  defence, 
multiplying  as  it  were  the  eyes  and  ears  of  every  indi- 
vidual of  the  herd.  To  the  part  played  in  social  progress 
by  the  reduction  in  the  number  of  offspring  and  the  pro- 
longed and  dependent  infancy— characters  in  part  directly 
associated  with  the  phase  of  arboreal  life — attention  has 
often  been  drawn.  The  evidence  of  tender  concern  for  the 
young  is  a  notable  feature  from  the  monkeys  upwards, 
and  the  prolonged  infancy  meant  that  longer  association 
of  the  parents  which  developed  into  the  incipient  family 
life  of  some  of  the  Anthropoids.  In  certain  cases  these 
families  combine  into  larger  social  or  community  groups, 
and  the  advantages  of  such  a  manner  of  life  were  more 
than  ever  apparent  to  the  terrestrial  Homosimius.  In- 
creasing adventure,  into  the  open  meant  sometimes  speedy 
retreats  which  confirmed  the  lower  limbs  as  instruments 
of  progression  and  support,  while  the  ability  to  use  the 
hands  was  probably  largely  employed  in  learning  the 
possibilities  of  sticks  and  stones  as  implements,  and  how 
to  employ  them  to  advantage.  Right-handedness  is  a 
very  old  discrimination  with  which  the  situation  of  the 
heart  on  the  left  side  may  have  had  something  to  do. 
Means  of  communication  by  signs  and  gesture  would  be 
more  and  more  superseded  by  sounds,  onomatopoetic  hi 
relation  to  the  cries  of  animals  or  the  sounds  of  Nature. 
In  the  case  of  every  one  of  these  brain-directed  actions 
there  was  reaction  on  the  brain  and  resultant  develop- 
ment, and  as  ideas  became  more  and  more  associated 
with  sounds  and  actions,  the  former  tended  to  drive 
man  increasingly  into  attempts  to  convey  and  express 
them  to  his  fellows ;  but  new  ideas  seem  to  have 
come  and  made  their  way  even  more  slowly  than  they 
do  to-day. 

The  steady  growth  of  the  brain  reacted  on  the  general 
shape  of  the  face  and  skull.  Already  in  1893  Dr.  Robert 
Munro  l  directly  connected  the  retrocession  or  contrac- 

1  Proc.  Royal  Soc.  Edin.  vol.  xxv.  p.  93. 


8o       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

tion  of  the  facial  bones — especially  the  jaw-bones — to- 
wards the  central  axis  of  the  spinal  column  with  the 
anterior  development  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres,  which 
otherwise  would  have  upset  the  equipoise  of  the  head  on 
the  top  of  the  spinal  column.  The  balancing  was  also 
helped  by  a  backward  shifting  of  the  cerebrum  over  the 
cerebellum.  This  contraction  of  the  jaw-bones  meant  a 
greater  crowding  of  the  teeth,  with  the  result  that  the 
third  molars,  which  were  usually  as  large  and  sometimes 
larger  than  their  neighbours  hi  Palaeolithic  jaws,  have 
gradually  dwindled  until  they  are  almost  vestigial  in 
civilised  races.  Curiously  parallel  with  this  process  has 
been  the  development  of  the  chin.  To-day  it  is  possible 
to  get  a  fairly  close  approximation  of  the  actual  reduction 
in  length  in  Pleistocene  time  through  measurements  on 
the  oldest  fossil  jaws.  '  In  the  mandibles  of  very  ancient 
man/  says  Sir  Arthur  Keith,  '  the  chewing  surface  ex- 
ceeds the  highest  modern  development  by  a  considerable 
amount.  In  the  course  of  human  evolution,  the  chewing 
area  has  become  greatly  reduced,  a  reduction  which  prob- 
ably followed  the  growing  mastery  of  the  brain.'  *  There 
has  been  a  contraction  from  either  end  towards  the  centre 
of  the  jaw. 

It  is  undeniable  that  so  far  as  Homosimius  learned  to 
co-operate  in  the  chase  he  had  entered  an  admirable 
training-school.  Here  he  had  everything  to  learn,  having 
inherited  no  capacities  in  this  direction,  but  in  learning, 
as  the  educable  animal,  he  excelled  all  contemporary  life. 
Observation  of  his  quarry's  haunts  and  manner  of  life, 
the  making  of  weapons  and  the  selection  of  the  material 
for  them,  the  devising  of  traps,  were  all  exercises  that  de- 
manded growing  memory  of  details  and  aided  in  forcing 
him  into  development  of  speech  and  gesture.  It  is  prob- 
able also  that  as  sparks  were  produced  in  the  fashioning 
of  flint  implements,  man  may  have  come  by  this  way 
into  his  knowledge  of  the  use  of  fire.  With  this  acquisi- 
tion Alfred  Russel  Wallace  sought  to  explain  the  loss  of 

1  The  Antiquity  of  Man,  p.  450. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN  81 

the  anthropoid  hairiness,  which  still  persists,  however,  to 
a  certain  degree  as  a  racial  characteristic  in  the  Ainus  of 
Yezo.  This  loss,  it  is  of  some  importance  to  recollect, 
was  attributed  by  Darwin  to  the  action  of  sexual  selec- 
tion,1 which  has  undoubtedly  played  a  great  part  as  a 
factor  in  connection  with  the  development  of  secondary 
characters  in  the  evolution  of  man,  while  the  naturalist 
and  traveller,  Belt,  had  correlated  the  acquirement  of  the 
relatively  naked  skin  under  the  action  of  natural  selection 
with  freedom  from  parasites.  In  Wallace's  opinion,  man 
'  may  have  lost  [his  hairy  covering]  gradually,  from  the 
time  when  he  first  became  Man — the  spiritual  being,  the 
"  living  soul  "  in  a  corporeal  body,  in  order  to  render  him 
more  sensitive.  From  that  moment  he  was  destined  to 
the  intellectual  advance  which  we  term  civilisation.  He 
was  to  be  exposed  to  a  thousand  self-created  dangers 
totally  unknown  to  the  rest  of  the  animal  world.  His 
very  earliest  advance  towards  civilisation — the  use  of 
fire — became  thenceforth  a  daily  and  hourly  danger  to 
him,  to  be  guarded  against  only  by  sudden  and  acute 
pain  ;  and  as  he  advanced  onwards  and  his  life  became 
more  complex  ;  as  he  surrounded  himself  with  dwellings, 
and  made  clothing  and  adopted  cookery  as  a  daily  prac- 
tice, he  became  more  and  more  exposed  to  loss,  to  injury, 
and  to  death  from  fire,  and  thus  would  be  subject  to  the 
law  of  selection  by  which  those  less  sensitive  to  fire,  and 
therefore  more  careless  in  the  use  of  it,  became  elimin- 
ated.' 2  So  specific  a  human  character  as  the  relatively 
naked  skin  was  probably,  however,  the  resultant  of  the 
operation  of  several  causes. 

And  now  with  regard  to  the  actual  data  concerning 
man.  Long  before  unequivocal  proofs  of  the  existence 
of  man,  either  by  way  of  chipped  flints  of  unmistakably 
human  origin  or  actual  fossil  remains,  come  within  our 
purview,  a  whole  series  of  objects  is  offered  for  examina- 
tion by  serious  and  enthusiastic  workers  in  this  particular 

1  The  Descent  of  Man,  New  Edition,  pp.  915-922. 
•  The  World  of  Life,  p.  378. 


82       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

domain,  for  which  the  claim  is  made  that  they  are  arti- 
facts, and  that  the  scant  measure  of  handiwork  which 
even  their  sponsors  can  only  demonstrate  in  them  con- 
forms exactly  to  the  state  of  mental  development  of  the 
living  forms  who  are  supposed  to  have  fashioned  them. 
It  is  now  several  years  since  attention  was  first  directed 
to  these  Eoliths,  as  they  are  called — flints  of  peculiar  shape 
found  often  in  great  quantities  in  beds  that  are  un- 
doubtedly of  Pliocene  origin.  Thus  a  series  of  supposed 
flint  implements  was  discovered  in  1897  by  Mr.  Lewis 
Abbott  in  the  Cromer  Forest  beds,1  which  are  usually 
assigned  to  the  very  base  of  the  Pleistocene,  but  it  was 
more  especially  the  flints  taken  by  Mr.  W.  G.  Clarke  in 
1905  from  under  the  Norwich  Crag  formation  in  East 
Anglia,  and  by  Mr.  Reid  Moir  in  1910  from  underneath 
the  Red  Crag — both  definitely  Pliocene  deposits — as  well 
as  the  remarkable  series  of  objects  investigated  by  M. 
Rutot  in  Belgium  of  what  he  has  called  the  Strepyan 
industry,  that  started  the  vigorous  controversy  which  is 
still  as  yet  undecided.  Indeed,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
Rutot  includes  as  early  Pleistocene  cultures  the  industries 
that  he  designates  as  Reutelian,  MarBian,  and  Mesvinian 
respectively,  all  of  which  are  Eolithic,  the  first  going  back 
to  the  very  junction  of  the  Pliocene  and  Pleistocene  for- 
mations, and  being  preceded  by  a  St.  Prestian  culture 
definitely  Pliocene,  so  called  from  objects  found  originally 
by  1'Abbe  Bourgeois  in  gravel  deposits  at  Saint  Prest 
near  Chartres  (Eure-et-Loire).  The  Strepyan  culture 
which  Rutot  regards  as  the  direct  precursor  of  the  Chellean 
culture,  and  included  by  him  in  the  Palaeolithic  series, 
corresponds  in  time  to  the  lowest  of  the  mid-Pleistocene 
deposits,  subsequent  to  the  second  or  Mindelian  glacial 
period.  Eoliths  are  broadly  reducible  to  three  types  repre- 
sented hi  fig.  7.  Guesses  at  their  use  seldom  get  beyond 

1  Historically  the  first  eolithic  claims  were  advanced  by  Mr.  Ben- 
jamin Harrison  on  account  of  discoveries  made  by  him  in  Kent  in  1865, 
and  by  M.  1'Abbe  Bourgeois  in  1867  in  connection  with  the  Thenay 
flints  found  by  him  in  Tertiary  gravels  in  the  region  of  Loire-et-Cher. 
The  acuteness  of  the  controversy  is  a  more  recent  development. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN  83 

that  of  scrapers  for  skins.  The  problem  of  form  has 
recently  been  complicated  by  the  pretensions  advanced 
on  behalf  of  a  much  more  complex  hammer-headed  type 
styled  '  rostro-carinate,'  from  its  supposed  partial  resem- 
blance to  a  keel,  ending  in  a  strong  curve  like  an  eagle's 
beak.  For  this  implement  the  same  purpose  is  suggested.1 
These  forms  are  all  Pliocene,  but  still  older  examples,  as 
those  from  the  Miocene  found  at  Le  Puy  Courny,  '  rather 
less  unconvincing '  in  Macalister's  opinion  2  than  some 


FIG.  7. — Types  of  Kentian  eoliths,  showing  chipping  (i)  round  the  edges, 
(ii)  in  a  hollow  between  two  projections,  and  (iii)  on  the  two  sides  of  a  projec- 
tion. (From  Macalister's  Text-book  of  European  Archaeology.') 

of  later  date,  have  been  accepted  by  several  expert 
investigators  as  the  handicraft  of  some  unknown 
Homosimius. 

The  question  of  eoliths  opens  up  a  very  difficult  contro- 
versy, for  they  constitute,  if  artifacts,  the  sole  evidence 
for  Tertiary  man.  Theoretically  there  was  a  Tertiary 
ancestor ;  is  there  as  yet  any  unequivocal  evidence  of 
him,  and  had  he  already  in  the  Pliocene  evolved  from 
Homosimius  into  Homo  ?  In  the  light  of  present  know- 

1  For  a  critical  account  of  '  rostro-carinates  '  see  Prof.  W.  J.  Sollas, 
B.  A.  Report,  1913,  pp.  788-790,  where  the  evidence  afforded  by  the 
Selsey  flints  of  this  type,  examined  in  situ,  is  stated  to  be  '  uniformly 
suggestive  of  the  action  of  natural  causes.' 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  162. 


84       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

ledge,  the  first  question  must  still  be  answered  in  the 
negative,  and  to  the  second  the  fairest  answer  is,  We  do 
not  know  as  yet  with  any  certainty.  In  default  of  an 
objective  standard  or  test  whereby  we  can  with  certainty 
distinguish  between  man's  earliest  attempts  at  tool- 
making  and  natural  objects,  all  judgment  upon  the  nature 
of  eoliths  must  necessarily  be  subjective,  and  as  long  as 
there  are  alternative  natural  explanations  of  their  origin, 
as  e.g.  the  pressure  of  overlying  soil  or  the  effects  of 
changes  of  temperature,  it  is  the  sounder  method  to 
adjudge  them  natural  objects.  Further,  the  circum- 
stances that  there  is  no  intrinsic  advance  noticeable 
between  the  earliest  (Oligocene)  and  latest  (Pleistocene, 
and  even  Holocene)  eoliths  comparable  with  the  enormous 
period  of  time  represented  by  this  stretch,  that  their  dis- 
tribution as  a  whole  coincides  with  the  distribution  of 
flint  (although  this  by  no  means  involves  the  converse 
statement  that  wherever  flint  is  found,  there  also  eoliths 
will  be  found),  and  the  extraordinary  difficulty  in  imagin- 
ing any  use  within  reason  to  which  these  objects  could 
be  put,  all  tend  to  suggest  that  the  more  probable  ex- 
planation of  the  evidence  produced  to  date  lies  in  the 
working  of  non-human  causes.  Even  in  the  case  of  the 
Piltdown  remains,  where  eoliths  were  taken  from  the 
same  gravel  bed,  there  is  no  irresistible  compulsion  in  the 
actual  evidence  to  suppose  that  they  are  artifacts.  As 
matters  stand  to-day,  and  particularly  in  face  of  the  possi- 
bilities of  such  deliberate  judgments  as  those  of  Professor 
Sollas  and  Mr.  S.  Hazzledine  Warren,1  it  seems  barely 
justifiable  to  base  theories  about  the  existence  of  Tertiary 
man,  or  his  precursors,  on  the  strength  of  the  present 
eolithic  evidence.  So  far  as  the  Quaternary  industries 
classified  by  Rutot  are  concerned,  they  are  from  deposits 

1  '  As  a  result  of  tedious  and  careful  digging  with  small  hand  tools 
I  have  seen  the  rostro-carinates,  the  Foxhall  type  of  flakes  with  edge 
trimming,  pseudo-borers,  pseudo-scrapers,  spur  implements,  single 
notches,  double  notches,  and  many  more,  all  in  tie  actual  process  of 
manufacture  by  the  movement-under-pressura  of  one  stone  against 
another.' — (Man,  voL  xxii.  No.  6.) 


FIG.  8. — Restoration  of  Pithecanthroptis,  under  the  direction  of  Mons.  Kutot. 
(By  permission.) 


Page  8S. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN  85 

where,  as  the  children  say  in  their  search  for  a  concealed 
object,  we  are  becoming  '  warm.'  But  as  the  external 
control  is  still  wanting,  no  definite  judgment  can  be  passed 
upon  them  either  way. 

When,  finally,  we  consider  the  organic  fossil  remains 
dating  from  the  period  when  the  manlike  Ape  was  evolving 
into  the  apelike  Man,  there  is  only  one  specimen  that  calls 
for  serious  consideration,  and  of  definitely  human  Lower 
Pleistocene  remains,  only  two  or  three.  The  attempt  is 
sometimes  made  to  depreciate  the  value  of  the  evidence 
on  the  ground  of  its  paucity.  When  due  regard  is  had 
to  all  the  conditions  militating  against  the  probability  of 
the  preservation  of  human  remains  from  such  a  remote 
period,  the  remarkable  circumstance  is  that  any  evidence 
has  come  to  light  at  all.  It  is  also  certain  that  evidence 
of  incalculable  importance  has  been  in  human  hands 
during  past  decades,  and  been  lost  or  destroyed  through 
the  failure  of  the  discoverers  to  realise  the  importance  of 
what  they  had  found.  It  can  be  confidently  stated  in  the 
light  of  what  is  already  unquestionably  known  that  the 
discoveries  of  the  next  hundred  years  will  not  merely 
place  the  great  antiquity  of  man  beyond  all  doubt,  but 
provide  a  solution  of  many  of  the  unsolved  problems  of 
to-day  regarding  the  development  of  the  earliest  human 
races. 

Undoubtedly  the  remains  which  first  claim  attention 
are  those  to  which  the  discoverer  gave  the  name  of 
Pithecanthropus  erectus.  Here  the  difficulty  of  determin- 
ing the  geological  horizon  is  great  and  the  conclusions 
depending  thereon  exceedingly  eventful.  The  remains, 
which  consist  of  a  skull  cap  (calvaria],  a  left  femur  (patho- 
logical in  part),  and  two  teeth  (second  upper  left  and  third 
upper  right  molars),1  were  discovered  by  a  Dutch  army 
doctor,  Eugene  Dubois,  near  Trinil  in  the  Island  of  Java 
during  the  years  1892-1894,  in  strata  (andesite  tufa)  sup- 

1  To  these  may  be  added  a  small  fragment  of  a  lower  jaw  undescribed 
by  Dubois,  and  a  third  tooth  discovered  in  the  same  locality  by  a 
subsequent  expedition  under  Frau  Selenka  (1906). 


86       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

posed  by  him  to  be  of  Pliocene  age,  but  more  generally 
determined  as  early  Pleistocene,  on  the  left  bank  of  the 
river  Bengawan,  about  15  metres  below  the  surface.  The 
remains  were  not  all  found  at  the  same  time,  but  at  con- 
siderable intervals,  and  it  is  possible,  though  improbable, 
that  they  did  not  all  belong  to  the  same  individual,  for 
the  skull-cap  and  thigh-bone  were  lying  about  15  metres 
apart.  Dubois  at  once  challenged  interest  by  his  creation 
of  a  new  family  for  the  bones,  and  stated  that  in  them  we 
had  evidence  of  a  form  intermediate  between  Simiidae 
and  Hominidae,  i.e.  ancestral  to  both.  In  support  of 
the  previous  indications  as  to  the  place  of  origin  of  the 
human  race,  it  is  important  to  bear  in  mind  that  Java 
and  Borneo  at  this  particular  period  formed  parts  of 
the  Asiatic  Continent,  and  that  there  was  therefore 
the  possibility  of  a  wide  range  of  distribution  for  forms 
of  which  we  have  earlier  evidence  in  the  foot-hills  of 
the  Himalayas. 

Several  interesting  features  arose  in  connection  with 
the  detailed  study  of  the  parts.  Of  these  the  most  strik- 
ing was  the  fact  that  they  all  show  features  both  simian 
and  human,  in  varying  degrees.  In  the  case  of  the  skull 
have  been  noted  1  as  simian  the  massive  brutal  brow- 
ridges,  and  the  low,  flattened  curve  of  the  sagittal  arc  of 
the  calvaria ;  as  human,  its  great  absolute  size  and 
capacity.  The  latter  at  855  c.c.  is  more  than  30  per  cent, 
greater  than  the  corresponding  figure  for  the  largest 
Simiidan  skull,  and  implies  an  estimated  associated  brain 
weight  of  750  grms.  At  the  same  time,  this  content  of 
855  c.c.  is  well  below  the  modern  normal  range  of  1300  to 
1500  c.c.  The  narrow  forehead  also  adds  to  the  impres- 
sion of  the  calvaria  being  more  simian  than  human.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  actual  brain  specifications,  as  gathered 
from  the  cast  made  by  Dr.  Dubois,  forbid  any  such 
absolute  conclusion.  Thus  the  speech  area  was  about 
twice  as  great  as  that  of  the  Simiidae  and  half  as  large  as 
in  man,  but  the  frontal  areas  associated  with  memory, 

1  Cf.  e.g.  W.  L.  H.  Duckworth,  Morphology  and  Anthropology,  p.  514. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN  87 

attention,  and  co-ordination  were  in  a  comparatively 
early  stage  of  development.  In  the  case  of  the  femur, 
while  some  authorities  have  seen  a  simian  feature  in  the 
very  straightness  of  the  shaft,  its  absolute  length  (455 
mm.,  indicating  an  associated  stature  of  about  5  feet 
8  inches  with  erect  attitude)  and  the  slenderness  of  the 
shaft,  are  human.  With  regard  to  the  teeth,  the  marked 
divergence  and  size  of  the  roots,  together  with  the  large 
dimensions  of  the  crown,  are  simian  characters,  but  in  all 
other  points  and  proportions  they  are  more  human  than 
simian. 

Expert  opinion  was  for  long  divided  into  three  groups  : 
(a)  those  who  considered  that  the  remains  were  purely 
simian,  while  admitting  that  the  ape  thus  represented 
was  superior  to  any  other  member  of  the  Simiidae,  extinct 
or  alive  ;  (b)  those  who  considered  that  the  remains  were 
purely  human,  but  therefore  of  a  Pleistocene  man  inferior 
to  any  known  human  form  ;  and  (c)  those  who  found  in 
them  the  remains  of  a  form  ancestral  to  the  human  and 
simian  groups  alike — not  wholly  human  and  yet  superior 
to  the  Simiidae.  So  Sir  Arthur  Keith  sees  in  these  bones 
evidence  of  '  a  being  human  in  stature,  human  in  gait, 
human  in  all  his  parts,  save  his  brain.  The  full  develop- 
ment of  the  brain  came  last.' *  Schwalbe  considers 
Pithecanthropus  erectus  as  '  the  root  of  a  branch  which 
has  sprung  from  the  anthropoid  ape  root  and  has  led  up 
to  man.'  a  Careful  measurements  of  the  skull,  and  a 
comparative  study  of  it  with  related  forms  in  connection 
with  an  attempt  to  assign  their  systematic  place  to  the 
Aborigines  of  Tasmania,  led  Professor  Berry  to  give 
Pithecanthropus  an  intermediate  position  in  the  direct 
line,  yet  nearer  the  ape  than  man.8  In  the  present  state 
of  our  knowledge,  and  with  due  regard  to  the  implications 
of  the  other  views,  some  via  media  commends  itself  most. 
In  short,  Pithecanthropus  is  in  a  sense  a  '  missing  link ' 

1  op.  dt.  p.  268. 

1  Chap.  vii.  in  Darwin  and  Modern  Science,  p.  135. 

*  Proc.  Royal  Society,  Edinburgh,  vol.  xxxiv.  pp.  144-189. 


88       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

in  that  it  represents  a  form  morphologically  between  the 
anthropoid  apes  and  man,  and  may  be  a  modified  Pleisto- 
cene survivor  of  a  still  earlier  human  ancestral  form. 
Whether  it  is  considered  definitely  human  or  still  sub- 
human depends  upon  where  the  line  is  drawn,  analogous 
to  that  between  youth  and  manhood.  Investigation  of 
the  brain  cast  shows  a  development  of  the  auditory  region 
which  in  Professor  Elliot  Smith's  opinion  indicates  that 
Pithecanthropus  was  already  on  the  human  side  of  the 
line. 

Such  an  account  of  man's  origin,  it  may  be  felt,  differs 
in  character  from  that  in  Genesis  I  26'28  and  2,  4b'7,  which 
used  to  be  considered  authoritative  upon  this  question. 
These  passages  are  authoritative  with  the  simple  authority 
of  truth  as  accounts  of  the  relationship  of  man  to  God, 
and  of  his  mental,  moral  and  religious  capacity,  but  to  be 
historical  records  of  his  origin  they  make  no  pretence. 
The  name  '  Adam  '  is  not  the  proper  name  of  a  particular 
individual :  it  is  the  Hebrew  word  for  man.  As  we  pro- 
ceed with  the  Biblical  history  we  find  situations  developed 
which  are  incompatible  with  the  idea  of  one  single  indi- 
vidual and  his  family  being  the  only  existing  human 
beings.  In  Genesis  4  14,  when  Cain  is  driven  away  because 
of  his  crime,  he  expects  to  meet  other  men  who  might  kill 
him.  He  also  '  builded  a  city  '  (4  17),  which  is  intelligible 
on  the  view  that  the  proper  name  represents  a  tribe  of 
which  Cain  was  the  head  or  representative  family,  perhaps 
the  eponymous  ancestor  of  the  Kenites.  More  probably, 
accordingly,  in  the  story  of  Adam  we  have  the  first 
stage  in  that  selective  process  which  characterises  all 
Hebrew  history  from  Noah,  through  Abraham,  Isaac, 
Jacob,  the  southern  kingdom  in  the  time  of  Rehoboam, 
the  Babylonish  captivity,  and  the  early  Christian  com- 
munity. 

We  ought  further  to  observe  that  the  simple  notion  of 
the  formation  of  the  first  parents  of  the  race  out  of  clay 
by  a  divine  or  superhuman  being  is  not  limited  to  Scrip- 
ture where,  in  particular,  the  association  of  man  with  the 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN  89 

ground  was  almost  literal  in  the  Hebrew  mind.1  A 
similar  account  of  origins  is  found  in  Babylonian,  Egyptian, 
and  Greek  mythologies,  and  the  same  conception  is 
current  amongst  modern  savages.2  Even  the  details  as 
to  the  formation  of  the  first  woman  out  of  a  rib  of  the 
man  are  found  in  Polynesian  folklore  under  conditions 
that  seem  to  rule  out  all  possibility  of  the  account  being 
a  reminiscence  of  the  Biblical  story  learned  at  some 
remoter  period. 

And,  further,  amongst  savage  peoples  there  are  also 
philosophies  akin  to  the  Darwinian,  in  which  the  origin 
of  man  from,  and  actual  kinship  with,  lower  forms  of  life 
are  leading  ideas.  In  fact,  this  feeling  is  the  essence  of 
totemism,  that  strange  form  of  superstition  that  links 
certain  clans  with  particular  species  of  plants  or  animals 
so  closely  that  men  of  the  tribe  unconsciously  develop 
characteristics  of  the  totem,  and  are  as  concerned  about 
its  welfare  as  about  their  own.  Reference  is  made  to  this 
point  simply  as  illustrative  of  a  curiously  developed  sense 
of  kinship  with  the  lower  creation,  which  is  sometimes  so 
strong  as  to  eliminate  all  sense  of  distinction  between 
man  and  beast.  In  short,  amongst  savage  peoples,  we 
find  traditions  of  origin  that  are,  very  roughly,  compar- 
able to  Special  Creation  on  the  one  hand  and  to  Evolution 
on  the  other,  and  some  instances,  e.g.  the  traditions  of  the 
Arunta  tribe  of  Central  Australia,  where  the  crudest  of 
attempts  is  made  to  combine  the  two  points  of  view. 

1  '  In  Heb.  "  ground  "  ('adamah)  is  in  form  the  fern,  of  "  man  " 
('adam)  ' ;  S.  R.  Driver,  The  Book  of  Genesis,  p.  37.  Cf.  also  Latin 
humus  and  homo. 

•  Cf.  Sir  J.  G.  Fraser, '  Some  Primitive  Theories  of  the  Origin  of  Man,' 
chap.  ix.  in  Darwin  and  Modern  Science. 


CHAPTER  V 

PALAEOLITHIC  MAN 

As  the  result  of  the  labours  of  countless  workers  in  all 
parts  of  the  world,  Palaeolithic  Man  no  longer  confronts 
us  as  an  individual  rarity,  not  even  as  a  single  type 
physically  or  culturally.  The  actual  story  of  each  suc- 
cessive discovery  reads  like  a  romance.1  The  gradual 
fitting  in  of  each  piece  into  the  complicated  puzzle-picture 
that  represents  the  evolutionary  history  of  man  is  the 
work  of  the  present  and  of  future  generations.  Doubtless 
there  will  be  much  readjustment  with  the  increase  of 
knowledge,  while  the  number  of  pieces  left  lying  around 
the  edge  of  the  picture  so  to  speak,  still  unplaced,  will  be 
considerable  for  a  long  time  to  come,  especially  as  recently 
they  have  been  found  more  rapidly  than  it  has  been 
possible  to  see  where  they  should  go.  Nevertheless  the 
story  can  be  given  in  rough  outline,  an  outline  that  is 
impressive  as  much  by  what  it  omits  as  by  what  it  in- 
cludes. 

Ordinarily  the  Palaeolithic  Period  is  subdivided  into 
three  stages,  Early,  Middle,  and  Late,  and  these  in  turn 
are  seen  to  represent  groupings  in  a  well-defined  succession 
of  progressive  cultural  stages  represented  by  the  terms 
Strepyan,  Chellean,  Acheulean,  Mousterian,  Aurignacian, 
Solutrean,  and  Magdalenian,  each  of  which  takes  its 
name  from  some  particular  site  where  the  culture  was 

1  For  authoritative  accounts  see  Les  Hommes  Fossiles,  by  Marcellin 
Boule  ;  Men  of  the  Old  Stone  Age,  by  H.  F.  Osborn  ;  The  Antiquity  of 
Man,  by  Sir  Arthur  Keith,  and  A  Text-book  of  European  Archaeology, 
vol.  i.,  by  Prof.  R.  A.  S.  Macalister  ;  for  an  excellent  resumS,  A  Guide 
to  the  Fossil  Remains  of  Man  (British  Museum,  Natural  History),  by 
Dr.  A.  Smith  Woodward. 
90 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  91 

originally  discovered  and  studied.  Distinctively  Early 
Palaeolithic  are  all  Chellean  and  Acheulean  remains, 
ushered  in  by  the  Strepyan  or  pre-Chellean  phase  which 
borders  on  Eolithic  days.  Middle  Palaeolithic  comprises 
the  Mousterian  phase,  while  Late  Palaeolithic  corresponds 
to  the  Aurignacian,  Solutrean,  and  Magdalenian  cultures. 
Thereafter  through  the  Mesolithic  transition  stages  of 
Azilian  and  Campignian  cultures  we  pass  on  into  the 
Neolithic  world.  We  have  already  considered  the  at- 
tempted correlation  of  these  sequent  archaeological  phases 
of  Palaeolithic  humanity  with  the  geological  phases  of 
the  Great  Ice  Age.  It  is  not  remarkable  if  in  the  light  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  similarity  of  physical  conditions,  say 
in  the  Continental  England  and  Belgium  of  those  days, 
Rutot  should  be  able  to  suggest  a  correlation  of  his 
Strepyan  implements  with  objects  found  in  an  ancient 
gravel  on  the  '  loo-foot  terrace '  of  the  Thames. 

A.  Early  Palaeolithic 

Man  when  he  is  first  known  in  Europe  is  already  cer- 
tainly man.  The  humanising  of  the  ancestral  form  has 
been  accomplished,  although  the  product  still  bears  many 
obvious  marks  of  its  lower  estate.  He  is  no  longer 
Pithecanthropus ;  he  is  Homo.  The  period  is  so  remote 
that  we  cannot  definitely  say  whether  in  the  case  of  these 
earliest  human  bones  we  are  dealing  with  Strepyan  or 
Chellean  man.  Of  his  handicraft,  however,  there  is  un- 
doubted evidence  in  the  pre-Chellean  or  Strepyan  type 
of  implements  found  originally  in  Belgian  valley  deposits, 
especially  at  Stripy,  a  village  to  the  west  of  Charleroi, 
and  later  elsewhere.  These  crudest  and  oldest  of  flint 
implements  almost  divulge  the  story  of  their  manufacture, 
so  unfinished  and  hesitating  and  dimly  purposeful  do  they 
appear  to  be,  as  far  as  technique  is  concerned.  Neverthe- 
less they  stand  in  evident  serial  relationship  to  those  of 
the  succeeding  Early  Palaeolithic  cultures — thus  suggest- 
ing that  at  any  rate  within  this  period  of  time  we  have 


92       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

to  deal  in  Europe  with  a  more  or  less  continuous  popula- 
tion, whose  efforts  towards  the  improvement  of  their 
handicraft  resulted  through  incredibly  long  periods  in  the 
more  assured  touch  of  the  Chellean  flintsman  and  the 
finer  finish  of  the  Acheulean. 

So  far  as  actual  remains  are  concerned,  unequivocally 
human,  and  probably  the  oldest  human  fossil  bone  yet 
discovered,  is  the  lower  jaw  described  as  the  Mauer  man- 
dible. It  was  found  in  October  1907  at  a  depth  of  24-10 
metres  below  the  surface,  in  a  sand-pit  near  the  village  of 
Mauer,  some  10  kilometres  to  the  south-east  of  Heidel- 
berg, and  was  fully  described  by  Dr.  Schoetensack  in  a 
monograph  1  published  the  following  year.  The  stratum 
in  which  the  mandible  came  to  light  is  considered  to  be 
Early  Pleistocene  on  the  strength  of  other  fossil  remains 
found  in  the  same  deposit,  which  included  particularly 
those  of  the  Etruscan  rhinoceros  (Rhinoceros  etruscus]  and 
the  straight-tusked  elephant  (E.  antiquus).  Rutot  con- 
siders that  the  particular  stratum  corresponds  to  his 
Eolithic  Mafnian  phase,  just  subsequent  to  the  second  or 
Mindelian  glacial  phase.  The  jaw  is  certainly  human, 
yet  distinctive  in  the  opinion  of  its  first  investigator  in 
that  it  surpasses  all  other  known  human  remains  in  its 
combination  of  primitive  characters,  so  that  it  really 
suggests  a  generalised  type  from  which  all  jaws,  ancient 
and  recent,  can  be  readily  derived.  The  teeth  are  char- 
acteristically human,  showing  certain  features,  such  as 
enlarged  pulp  cavities,  wide  crowns,  large  bodies,  and 
diminished  roots  which  relate  the  jaw  closely  to  the 
Neanderthal  type,  which  is  characteristic  of  the  Mous- 
terian  period  :  on  the  other  hand,  the  canine  teeth  are 
even  less  tusk-like  than  in  modern  man.  These  char- 
acters, further,  with  '  the  wide  and  relatively  short  dental 
arch,  all  point  to  a  rough  vegetable  diet  necessitating  a 
grinding  rather  than  a  cutting  manner  of  mastication.' 2 
The  enormous  breadth  of  the  ascending  ramus  or  branch 

1  Der  Unterkiefer  des  Homo  Htidclbergensis  (Leipzig,  1908). 
*  Sir  A.  Keith,  op.  cit.  p.  239. 


FIG.  9. — Sand-pit  at  Mauer,  showing  site  (marked  by  white  cross)  of  discovery 
of  Heidelberg  jaw.  a-6,  newer  loess,  probably  of  Third  Interglacial ;  b-c,  older 
loess,  of  close  of  Second  Interglacial ;  e-f,  the  sands  of  Mauer ;  d-e,  inter- 
mediate clay  layer.  (From  H.  F.  Osborn's  Men  of  the  Old  Stone  Age.) 


Paft  92. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  93 

of  the  mandible — almost  twice  that  of  modern  man — to 
which  the  muscles  of  mastication  are  ordinarily  attached, 
indicate  a  masticatory  system  of  quite  unusual  strength. 
Further,  the  body  of  the  jaw  is  of  unusual  thickness,  and 
there  is  practically  no  chin,  or  one  that  recedes  in  the 
same  degree  as  in  the  apes.  In  other  features  the  Mauer 
jaw  shows  the  same  peculiarities  as  Neanderthal  man, 
although  in  a  more  marked  and  primitive  degree.  There 
are  also  indications  of  a  rudimentary  power  of  speech ; 
'  the  large,  shallow  pit,  always  conspicuous  on  the  inner 
face  of  the  bony  chin  in  the  ape,  is  here  nearly  filled  with 
a  deposit  of  bone  which  rises  into  the  characteristically 
human  "  genial  tubercles  "  for  the  origin  of  the  small 
muscles  which  help  to  work  the  tongue.' l 

The  second  group  of  remains,  collected  at  intervals  of 
several  years,  but  notably  in  1912,  from  a  gravel  pit  on  the 
edge  of  Piltdown  Common,  Sussex,  are  those  which  have 
been  dignified  with  the  name  of  Eoanthropus  dawsoni,  in 
recognition  of  their  discoverer,  the  late  Mr.  Charles  Daw- 
son.2  The  stratum  in  which  they  were  found  lay  at  a 
depth  of  less  than  four  feet — unusually  shallow  in  view 
of  the  suggested  age  of  the  deposit.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
however,  the  chronology  of  the  bed  is,  as  in  the  case  of 
Pithecanthropus,  a  matter  in  dispute  ;  estimates  based 
on  the  accompanying  fossil  remains  oscillate  between 
Pliocene  and  Lower  Pleistocene.  It  is  not  questioned  that 
some — but  by  no  means  all — of  the  animal  remains  found 
in  the  same  stratum  with  the  human  are  those  of  Pliocene 
forms,  as  e.g.  the  elephant  Stegodon.  What  causes  the 
uncertainty  are  the  indications  that  these  may  have  been 
washed  down  and  out  of  some  Pliocene  bed  by  a  greater 
Ouse  than  that  which  now  flows,  some  eighty  feet  below 
the  level  of,  but  about  a  mile  away  from,  the  Common, 
and  only  secondarily  deposited  where  they  were  found, 
in  a  bed  that  contains  undoubtedly  many  typically  Plei- 
stocene fossils.  Sir  Arthur  Keith,  basing  his  opinion  as 

1  A.  Smith  Woodward,  op.  cit.  p.  26. 

*  Why  a  new  generic  name  has  been  given  is  not  so  clear. 


FlG.  IO. — Left  side  view  of  (A)  skull  of  Eoanthropus, 
(B)  Neanderthal  (Mousterian)  skull  from  La-Chapelle- 
aux-Saints,  and  (C)  modern  human  skull  (J).  (From 
British  Museum  Guide  to  the  Fossil  Remains  of 
Man  ;  by  permission. )  Page  95. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  95 

an  anatomist  on  the  circumstance  that  '  in  the  Piltdown 
mandible  the  conformation  is  that  of  an  ape,'  *  inclines 
very  strongly  to  the  Pliocene  date.  He  considers  that 
'  the  Heidelberg  mandible  shows  that  the  human  contour 
of  the  chin  had  already  appeared  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Pleistocene,  but  a  change  of  this  kind  has  not  become 
manifest  in  the  Piltdown  mandible.'  2  This  might  sug- 
gest that  the  Piltdown  remains  are  older  than  the  Mauer 
jaw,  although  this  is  open  to  dispute,  but  in  default  of 
absolute  fixation  of  the  date  of  the  latter  specimen  it  does 
not  necessarily  involve  a  Pliocene  date  for  the  former. 
Eoliths  were  found  in  the  same  stratum  as  the  human 
remains,  and,  in  the  layer  just  above,  implements  that 
have  been  tentatively  described  as  Chellean,  as  also  part 
of  an  elephant's  femur  showing  undoubted  evidence  of 
having  been  worked  upon  by  the  hand  of  man. 

The  fragments  actually  found  were  those  of  a  skull — 
a  part  of  the  frontal  bone,  practically  the  whole  of  the 
left,  and  about  two-thirds  of  the  right  parietal  bones, 
which  form  the  greater  part  of  the  roof  and  sides  of  the 
brain  cavity,  a  considerable  fragment  of  the  occipital  or 
posterior  bone,  almost  the  whole  of  the  left  temporal  bone, 
which  forms  the  side  of  the  skull  below  the  level  of  the 
brain  cavity,  and  the  two  nasal  bones.  An  immediate 
impression  made  by  the  examination  of  these  particular 
bones  is  that  of  their  extraordinary  thickness,  which  is  on 
an  average  about  twice  as  great  as  that  of  the  correspond- 
ing bones  of  a  modern  skull.  In  addition  the  almost  com- 
plete right  half  of  the  mandible  was  recovered,  showing, 
however,  such  remarkable  simian  features  as  compared 
with  the  skull,  that  several  competent  anatomists  con- 
sider it  more  accurate  to  record  the  discovery  of  '  a/ 
rather  than  '  the,'  mandible.  It  contains  two  molar 
teeth  which  are  quite  human  in  character,  but  shows  a 
characteristic  simian  chin  or  rather  lack  of  chin.  The 
right  upper  canine  tooth  found  later,  which  most  prob- 
ably belonged  to  the  mandible,  is  of  special  interest 
1  op.  tit.  p.  310.  » ibid. 


96       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

because  while  pointed  and  shaped  as  in  anthropoid  apes, 
'  its  crown  differs  a  little  in  shape  from  the  canine  of  any 
known  ape,  and  agrees  more  closely  with  the  temporary 
(or  milk-)  canine  of  modern  man/  l  which  is  exactly  what 
might  be  expected  in  an  ancestral  form.  At  the  same 
time,  the  circumstance  that  the  mandible  shows  anthro- 
poid characters  which  have  never  been  previously  found 
in  a  human  mandible,  e.g.  the  strengthening  ledge  of  bone 
that  unites  the  two  halves  on  the  inside,  furnished  the 
reason  why  from  the  first  occasion  on  which  an  account 
of  this  historic  find  was  made — at  a  meeting  of  the 
Geological  Society  of  London  on  December  18,  1912 — 
Professor  Waterston  maintained  2  that  the  mandible  was 
that  of  an  anthropoid  ape  and  did  not  belong  to  the  skull 
• — a  position  which  has  also  found  the  support  of  Boule, 
Gregory,  Osborn,  and  others.  It  involves,  however,  the 
difficult  supposition  that  in  closest  association  were  found 
the  remains  of  the  earliest  known  man  and  of  the  first  ape 
discovered  in  Britain.  In  the  opinion  of  Sir  Arthur  Keith, 
who  accepts  the  mandible  as  belonging  to  the  skull,  the 
'  humanisation  '  of  the  Piltdown  canine  tooth  had  not 
gone  so  far  as  in  the  case  of  the  Mauer  jaw.  In  fact  it 
had  just  begun,  whereas  in  the  case  of  the  Heidelberg 
fossil  it  is  complete. 

The  task  of  attempting  to  reconstruct  the  skull  from 
the  available  fragments  has  led  to  much  ingenious  ex- 
perimenting, and  the  drawing  of  conclusions,  some  of 
which  are  necessarily  problematic.  At  the  same  time, 
there  is  now  a  fair  measure  of  agreement  that  the  cubic 
content  of  the  brain  was  about  1300  c.c.  The  latest  re- 
construction by  Professors  Elliot  Smith  and  Hunter  gives 
a  capacity  below  1300  c.c.,  and  confirms  Dr.  Smith  Wood- 
ward's opinion.  In  this  reconstruction  '  the  occipital 
fragment  assumes  a  more  vertical  position,  with  the  effect 
that  the  skull  is  brought  into  closer  relation  with  the  skull 
of  the  anthropoids.  As  a  result  the  cranium  falls  into 

1  A.  Smith  Woodward,  op.  cit.  p.  24. 
s  Cf.  also  Nature,  1913,  vol.  xcii.  p.  319. 


FIG.  1 1.— Left  outer  side  view  of  lower  jaw  of  (A)  Eoanthropus, 
(B)  chimpanzee,  (C)  Heidelberg  man,  and  (D)  modern  man  (J). 
r=canine  tooth;  w.r=first  molar  tooth.  (From  British 
Museum  Guide  to  the  Fossil  Remains  of  Man;  by  permission.) 

G 


98       THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

complete  harmony  with  the  chimpanzee-like  jaw.'  *  This 
cubic  content  is  equivalent  to  that  of  the  smaller  human 
brains  of  to-day,  like  that  of  the  Australian  aboriginal 
which  rarely  exceeds  1250  c.c.,  while  the  average  for  the 
modern  European  is  1480  c.c.  If  the  Piltdown  individual 
was  a  female,  for  which  there  is  some  evidence,  the  corre- 
sponding male  cubic  content  would  have  been  roughly 
100  c.c.  more.  Viewed  from  behind,  the  skull  is  not  so 
depressed  from  above  downwards  as  either  the  Neander- 
thal or  anthropoid  skull  (being  shaped  and  balanced  as 
in  modern  man),  and  shows  other  differences,  such  as  the 
great  thickness  of  the  bones  and  the  marked  development 
of  a  forehead.  Further,  it  was  distinctly  brachy cephalic.2 
The  facial  region  as  restored  shows  this  unexpectedly  high 
frontal  development,  a  broad  nasal  formation  as  in  certain 
primitive  tribes  of  to-day,  and  a  projecting  muzzle  whose 
sharpness  is  at  once  accentuated  by  the  retreating  chin 
and  masked  by  the  developed  forehead.  In  his  study  of 
the  brain-cast,  Sir  Arthur  Keith  points  out  that  the  third 
frontal  convolution  of  the  brain,  which  is  related  to  the 
faculty  of  speech,  had  reached  the  human  standard  so 
far  as  size  and  general  conformation  are  concerned. 
'  Accordingly/  he  concludes,  '  we  have  grounds  for  be- 
lieving that  the  Piltdown  man  had  reached  that  point  of 
brain  development  where  speech  had  become  a  possi- 
bility. When  one  looks  at  the  jaw,  however,  and  the 
projecting  canine  teeth,  one  hesitates  to  allow  him  more 
than  a  mere  potential  ability.'  3  In  essential  features,  so 
far  as  can  be  judged  by  this  literally  superficial  and  some- 
what unsatisfactory  method,  the  brain  of  Eoanthropus 
corresponded  to  that  of  modern  man,  although  many 
primitive  conditions  are  noticeable  in  the  former.  Thus 

1  Nature,  No.  2744,  p.  726  (3rd  June  1922) 

1  This  term  (=round  or  short-headed)  is  applied  to  races  in  which 
the  average  width  of  the  skull  is  80  per  cent,  of  the  length,  or  more. 
When  the  proportion  is  only  75  per  cent,  or  less,  the  race  is  said  to  be 
dolichocephalic,  i.e.  long-headed.  The  intermediate  group  is  some- 
times termed  mesocephaUc. 

9  Op,  cit.  p.  408. 


l-'i<;.  12.  —  Restoration  of  Eoanthroptis,  under  the  direction  of  Mons.  Kutol. 
(By  permission.) 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  99 

in  particular  there  was,  in  Professor  Elliot  Smith's  words, 
'  a  precocious  expansion '  of  the  superior  temporal  area 
of  the  brain  which  is  concerned  with  the  appreciation  of 
auditory  symbolism.  On  the  other  hand,  compared  with 
the  brain  of  modern  man  there  was  a  deficiency  in  other 
areas — the  prefrontal,  upper  parietals,  and  inferior 
temporals,  concerned  with  the  higher  reaches  of  the 
human  mind — which  are  gradually  filled  out  in  succeed- 
ing types. 

Of  Chellean  or  pre-Chellean  man  there  are  no  other 
indisputable  skeletal  remains.  Of  his  handiwork,  which 
takes  its  name  from  the  kind  of  flint  implement  first  found 
in  certain  ancient  deposits  at  Chelles  in  the  valley  of  the 
Marne,  some  eight  miles  to  the  east  of  Paris,  the  most 
typical  form  is  that  which  is  still  called  by  de  Mortillet's 
original  designation,  the  coup-de-poing,  or  hand-axe.  This 
flint  implement,  which  may  be  considered  as  a  natural 
development  of  some  of  the  Strepyan  attempts,  is  gener- 
ally shaped  by  chipping  so  as  to  be  more  or  less  sharp  and 
pointed  at  the  business  end,  while  the  other,  which  is  held 
in  the  hand,  is  rounded  and  blunt.  Coups-de-poing  vary 
in  shape,  being  oval,  triangular,  and  lozenge-shaped. 
Normally  they  are  some  3  to  4  inches  in  length,  but 
specimens  are  known  three  times  as  large.  There  is  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  they  were  attached  to  a  wooden 
shaft,  or  employed  as  weapons.  Their  use  was  probably 
very  general,  the  tool,  like  some  modern  successors,  being 
axe,  scraper,  borer,  knife,  and  saw,  all  in  one.  At  the 
same  time  specialisation  had  already  begun,  since  coups- 
de-poing  fashioned  more  particularly  to  carry  out  one  or 
other  of  these  functions  are  also  known.  In  default  of 
flint,  other  local  pebbles  were  employed.  Perforated 
flints  and  shells  have  also  been  described  from  Chellean 
and  Acheulean  gravels,  but  whether  these  were  worn  as 
personal  ornaments  or  magic  charms  it  is  impossible  to 
say. 

The  Acheulean  phase  takes  its  name  from  St.  Acheul 
near  Amiens,  in  the  valley  of  the  Somme,  in  the  gravel 


ioo     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

deposits  of  which,  at  the  '  loo-foot  terrace '  level,  Boucher 
de  Perthes,  local  customs  officer  and  antiquarian,  dis- 
covered and  recognised  as  human  handiwork  in  1846,  the 
characteristic  flint  implements  that  now  bear  that  designa- 
tion. Although  belonging  to  the  same  general  types  as 
Chellean  implements,  the  Acheulean  coups-de-poing  are 
on  the  whole  smaller  in  size.  There  is  a  certain  fastidious- 
ness and  artistry  in  their  manufacture,  showing  itself  in 
greater  regularity  of  fashioning.  The  Acheulean  tool  is 
a  more  finished  implement,  with  more  perfect  lines  in 
straightened  edge  or  graceful  screwlike  curve — a  distinct 
advance  upon  the  Chellean  predecessor.  The  more  in- 
tensive study  by  the  late  Professor  Commont  of  the  strati- 
fied gravels  on  the  four  river  terraces  of  the  Somme,  which 
have  proved  to  contain  a  resume  of  the  whole  history  of 
the  Palaeolithic  Age,  shows  that  the  Early  Acheulean  type 
of  coup-de-poing  was  oval  with  the  greatest  thickness  in 
the  middle,  rather  than  at  the  butt  end  as  in  the  Chellean 
type,  and  that  the  Late  Acheulean  type  was  triangular, 
long,  and  narrow.  The  transition  to  the  Mousterian  may 
even  be  traced  in  the  introduction  of  a  miniature  tri- 
angular (La  Micoque)  coup-de-poing  or  scraper,  often  with 
secondary  chipping  along  one  side  only,  and  in  the  dis- 
tinctive Levallois  scraper,  which  has  been  termed  '  the 
parent  of  all  the  Mousterian  tools.'  x  This  characteristic 
rectangular  flake,  smooth  on  the  surface  which  corre- 
sponds to  that  part  of  the  nodule  from  which  it  was 
detached  by  a  practised  blow,  and  secondarily  trimmed 
by  chipping  along  one  edge  even  before  it  was  finally 
detached  from  the  nodule,  persists  in  varying  modifica- 
tion throughout  the  Mousterian  culture.  Macalister 
states  that '  there  are  comparatively  few  varieties  of  tools 
found  in  Acheulean  deposits  ;  not  so  many,  indeed,  as 
appear  to  exist  in  Chellean  strata.  The  reason  probably 
is  that  the  improvement  in  the  manufacture  of  the  coup- 
de-poing  made  it  more  and  more  the  universal  tool/  2 
So  far  as  concerns  human  fossil  remains  from  the  Acheulean, 

1  Macalister,  op.  cit.  p.  326.  •  Op.  cit.  p.  239.     -  .'  J 


Fit;.  13. — Types  of  Coup-de-poing  or  Hand-axe  (i).  Chellean  (l,  2)  ; 
I  b  shows  sinuous  cutting  edge  of  I  a.  Achenlean  (3-5) ;  4  and  5  pre- 
serve at  the  hase  portions  of  the  original  surface  of  the  nodules.  (After 
de  Mortillet,  from  Geikie's  Antiquity  of  Man  in  Europe.} 

Pagt  loo. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  101 

the  only  probable  examples  are  the  two  teeth  found  at 
Taubach  near  Weimar  in  1871,  and  the  mandible  found 
at  Ehringsdorf  in  the  same  district  in  1914. 

Represented  in  most  of  Southern  England,  particularly 
in  the  basins  of  the  Thames,  Ouse,  and  ancient  Solent, 
throughout  France  and  Spain,  in  Italy  and  Sicily,  and 
more  scantily  in  the  German  plain  and  other  parts  of 
Europe,  the  Early  Palaeolithic  industries  testify  to  a  wide 
distribution  of  the  population  that  worked  them.  Yet 
it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  configuration  of  these 
countries  was  that  with  which  the  modern  map  makes 
us  familiar.  To  take  but  one  example.  In  Chellean  time 
the  British  Archipelago  of  to-day  represented  the  more 
elevated  areas  of  a  north-western  extension  of  the  Con- 
tinent. Caves  such  as  Kent's  Cavern  by  the  seashore  at 
Torquay  were  originally  high  up  on  the  slopes  of  a  well- 
watered  valley,  whose  luxuriant  vegetation  attracted  the 
herbivorous  forms  that  were  the  prey  of  the  cave  bears 
and  hyaenas  whose  bones,  together  with  that  of  their 
victims,  are  found  embedded  in  the  cave  floor.  Thus  the 
physical  and  organic  history  of  the  Southern  England  and 
North -Western  France  of  these  days  was  a  common 
history,  whose  common  fluctuations  may  be  read  alike 
on  either  side  of  the  Channel  river.  That  history  is  pre- 
served, as  we  have  seen,  in  the  terraces  on  the  banks  of 
the  Thames  and  Somme  alike,  each  of  the  four  terraces 
marking  a  stage  in  the  gradual  erosion  of  the  beds  of  these 
rivers  through  Strepyan  and  pre-Chellean  time  from  that 
greater  height  at  which  they  stood  in  the  beginning  of  the 
Pleistocene.  This  in  the  case  of  the  Somme  at  Amiens 
was  170  feet,  and  of  the  Thames,  90  feet  above  the  present 
level.  Thereafter  followed  a  period  of  depression  of  the 
land,  and  invasion  of  the  Channel  by  the  sea  which  in- 
vaded the  valley  of  the  Somme  as  far  as  Abbeville,  sub- 
merging three  of  the  terraces.  In  the  alluvial  deposits 
on  the  sides  of  the  valley  marking  the  height  of  the  river's 
activity,  and  just  below  the  level  of  the  highest  or  first 
of  the  Chellean  terraces,  have  been  found  the  typical 


loa     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Acheulean  implements.  This  period  of  depression  was 
in  turn  followed  by  a  period  of  emergence,  in  keeping  pace 
with  which  the  Somme  cut  not  merely  through  the 
Acheulean  loams  and  the  underlying  terraces  of  gravel, 
but  deeper  into  the  rocky  base  of  its  bed.  It  is  in  the 
alluvia  deposited  on  the  lower  re-emerging  terraces  through 
this  age-long  process  that  implements  of  Mousterian  and 
then  of  Late  Palaeolithic  date  are  found.  Thereafter  at 
the  close  of  the  Pleistocene  came  again  a  period  of  sub- 
mergence, resulting  in  the  land  level  of  to-day.  Very 
similar,  even  to  the  number  of  gravel  terraces,  and  the 
kind  of  implements  found  in  them,  is  the  correspondence 
that  has  been  worked  out  in  the  history  of  the  ancient 
banks  and  flood-levels  of  the  once  mile-broad  Thames. 
It  is  in  contemplating  the  amount  of  time  required  for  a 
river  to  cut  down  its  valley  through  a  hundred  feet,  as  for 
the  whole  series  of  slow  oscillations  of  land  surface  as 
outlined  above,  that  we  begin  to  have  some  understanding 
of  what  is  meant  by  geological  time.  Acheulean  days 
probably  commenced  anywhere  from  75,000  to  100,000 
years  ago. 

With  regard  to  the  climate  of  the  Chellean  period  in 
Europe,  there  can  be  little  doubt  from  the  indications  of 
the  fauna  and  flora  preserved  in  the  strata  characterised 
by  objects  of  that  culture,  that  it  was  of  a  tropical  and 
semi-tropical  character.  The  presence  of  such  forms  as 
the  hippopotamus,  rhinoceros  (R.  mercki],  straight- tusked 
elephant  (E.  antiquus),  together  with  the  great  beaver 
(Trogontherium  cuvieri] ,  spotted  hyaena  (H.  crocuta),  and 
brown  bear  (Ursus  arctos)  leave  little  doubt  upon  that 
matter.  As  we  work  upwards  into  the  Acheulean  strata, 
the  changing  fauna  and  flora  indicate  a  passage  to  a  more 
temperate  and  genial  climate,  but  towards  the  close  of  the 
Acheulean  there  is  evidence  of  a  change  for  the  worse, 
heralding  another  advance  of  the  ice-sheet,  which  took 
place  during  the  Mousterian.  The  hippopotamus  dis- 
appears from  Europe,  probably  migrating  along  the  land 
bridges  into  Africa ;  the  mammoth  (E.  primigenius]  re- 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  103 

places  the  straight-tusked  elephant  (E.  antiquus),  and 
Merck's  rhinoceros  disappears  before  the  woolly  rhinoceros 
(R.  tichorinus) . 

As  we  peer  back  into  the  mists  of  antiquity  trying  to 
reconstruct  the  life  of  man  as  we  first  know  him,  we  catch 
only  a  few  fugitive  glimpses.  We  are  aware  of  a  being 
lower  in  every  respect  than  any  modern  savage  tribe,  and 
yet  widely  removed  from  all  these  arrested  or  degenerate 
types  because  in  him  or  his  congeners  lay  the  potentiality 
of  the  best  to  which  man  has  attained  to-day.  He  is 
nomadic  in  bent,  wandering  from  district  to  district  and 
earning  the  precarious  livelihood  of  a  fisherman  and 
hunter.  Probably  he  migrated  into  Europe  from  regions 
to  the  east,  but  he  arrived  as  man.  And  from  the  be- 
ginning he  was  a  social  creature,  living  in  his  small  tem- 
porary communities  near  the  rivers,  or  inland  sheets  of 
water,  or  on  the  higher  plateaux.  The  rivers  provided 
him  with  water  and  fish,  as  also  with  guidance  and,  it 
may  be,  passage,  through  the  forests.  It  was  an  open-air 
life,  for  his  shelters  can  have  been  no  more  than  the 
simplest  structures  compacted  of  branches  and  of  skins. 
There  is  no  evidence  of  agriculture  or  the  domestication 
of  animals  :  the  art  of  the  potter  had  not  been  discovered. 
Yet  just  because  he  was  man,  he  could  match  his  wits 
against  the  fierce  strength  of  carnivores  or  the  fleetness 
of  herbivores,  and  trap  where  he  could  not  directly 
engage.  And  just  because  he  was  man,  the  super- 
latively educable  animal,  he  could  learn  and  improve  his 
methods  and  his  handicraft. 

It  has  been  stated  that  man  may  well  have  entered 
Europe  as  an  immigrant  from  the  east.  There  is  at  any 
rate  as  yet  no  evidence  to  suggest  that  the  previous  phases 
of  his  evolution  took  place  in  Europe.  The  only  skeletal 
remains  from  an  earlier  stage  have  been  found  in  Asia. 
Of  the  other  continents,  North  and  South  America  and 
Australia  have  supplied  nothing  as  yet  of  intrinsic  im- 
portance to  this  earliest  period  of  human  development, 
nor  from  the  theoretical  point  of  view  is  it  probable  that 


io4     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

they  will.1  In  North  America  there  is  considerable  evi- 
dence to  indicate  that  there  was  an  Ice  Age  during  the 
Pleistocene  with  phases  of  advance  and  retreat  that 
corresponded  to  those  that  have  been  recognised  in 
Europe.  It  is  quite  certain  also  that  the  original  North 
American  Indian  was  the  representative  and  descendant 
of  a  Mongolian  people  that  reached  that  continent  from 
Asia  by  way  of  a  land  connection  over  the  Behring 
Straits.  As  yet  there  has  been  no  unequivocal  discovery 
of  human  remains  in  any  American  interglacial  deposit. 
That  is  to  say,  the  peopling  of  North  America  has  been 
essentially  a  post-glacial  process  even  in  its  earliest  phases, 
so  far  as  we  know,  and  the  same  is  even  more  true  of 
South  America.  Africa,  on  the  other  hand,  remains  a  land 
of  alluring  prospect  in  this  connection,  and  it  is  highly 
probable  that  discoveries  of  the  greatest  importance, 
bearing  on  the  origin  and  antiquity  of  the  human  race, 
will  yet  be  made  within  this  continental  area.  It  is  not 
without  sound  reason  that  several  investigators  are  in- 
clined to  look  here  for  future  elucidation  of  these  problems. 
Thus  two  of  the  anthropoid  apes  have  their  home  in  west 
tropical  Africa,  although  probably  immigrants,  as  we  have 
seen,  from  farther  east.  Again,  implements  similar  to 
those  of  the  various  cultural  periods  from  the  Chellean 
onwards  have  been  described  from  the  ancient  river 
deposits,  especially  of  South  Africa,  while,  as  we  shall  see, 
the  suggested  connection  of  the  Aurignacians  and  Magda- 
lenians  with  Africa,  would  demand  some  previous  history 
for  their  antecedents  there.  In  physical  structure  African 
Bushmen  and  pygmy  races  show  degrees  of  specialisation 
which  must  involve  great  racial  antiquity. 

1  A  tooth  discovered  in  1922  in  a  North  American  Upper  Pliocene 
bed,  and  described  by  W.  K.  Gregory  as  belonging  to  an  unknown 
genus  whose  '  nearest  resemblances  are  with  Pithecanthropus  and  with 
men  rather  than  with  apes,'  may  be  the  hindmost  lower  molar  of  a 
primitive  bear  (Smith  Woodward). 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  105 

B.  Middle  Palaeolithic 

In  contrast  with  his  predecessors,  mid-Palaeolithic  or 
Mousterian  man  stands  out  with  greater  distinctness  ;  the 
conditions  of  his  life  are  also  somewhat  more  reproducible. 
For  this  there  are  several  reasons.  The  time  distance  is 
not  so  great,  and  accordingly  the  picture  is  more  in  focus. 
Further,  the  representatives  may  now  be  counted  in 
dozens — some  sixty  in  all — even  if  a  complete  skeleton  is 
still  a  rarity.  The  period,  which  probably  began  some 
fifty  thousand  years  ago  and  lasted  half  that  spell,  derives 
its  name  from  the  discoveries  originally  made  as  long  ago 
as  1863  in  the  Le  Moustier  cave,  near  the  village  of  Les 
Eyzies  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Vezere  in  the  Dordogne 
region  of  France.  For  Mousterian  man  was  typically  a 
troglodyte,  driven  to  cave  life  owing  to  the  increasing 
cold  and  damp  as  a  fresh  glacial  epoch  swept  on,  whose 
testing  inquisition  he  does  not  seem  to  have  survived. 
In  any  case  such  a  life,  more  settled  indeed,  but  under 
social  and  sanitary  conditions  which  cannot  have  been  as 
healthy  as  these  of  the  earlier  nomadic  life,  resulted  in 
degeneration  of  physical  type  and  handicraft. 

While  distinctive  Mousterian  flints  have  been  found  at 
various  points  in  England,  such  as  the  brick-earths  at 
Crayford  in  the  Thames  valley,  at  Ipswich  and  near 
Mildenhall  in  Suffolk,  associated  in  the  first  case  with  the 
typical  fauna  of  mammoth  (E.  pnmigenius),  the  lion 
(Felis  led],  different  species  of  rhinoceros,  the  musk  ox 
(Ovibos  moschatus),  and  the  lemming  (My odes),  all  bearing 
witness  to  cold  conditions,  no  remains  of  Mousterian  man 
himself  have  as  yet  been  found.  They  are,  however,  well 
represented  on  the  Continent.  In  particular,  the  skeleton 
exposed  by  M.  O.  Hauser  in  1908,  some  five  feet  below  the 
floor  of  another  cave  on  a  terrace  behind  the  town  of  Le 
Moustier  in  the  Ve"zere  Valley,  made  it  possible,  by  the 
comparative  completeness  of  the  remains,  to  establish 
beyond  all  doubt  the  existence  of  a  distinct  type  now 
known  as  Mousterian  or  Neanderthal  man,  which  almost 


io6     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

certainly  diverged  into  a  line  that  ended  with  itself  and 
did  not  develop  into  any  modern  human  race.  In  this 
particular  instance  the  body,  which  had  been  that  of  a 
lad  of  some  sixteen  summers,  was  deliberately  buried, 
having  been  laid  on  its  right  side,  with  the  right  hand 
under  the  head,  which  in  turn  was  cushioned  on  a  pillow 
composed  of  chippings  of  flint.  Charred  remains  of  the 
urus  or  wild  ox  (Bos  primigenius]  were  found  beside  the 
skeleton,  suggesting  a  funeral  feast,  together  with  typical 
Mousterian  implements.  About  the  same  time  (1908) 
in  a  small  cave  on  the  side  of  the  valley  of  the  Sourdoire, 
another  tributary  of  the  Dordogne,  near  the  village  of 
La  Chapelle-aux-Saints  in  the  department  of  Correze,  a 
similar  Mousterian  or  Neanderthal  skeleton  was  found 
three  feet  below  the  surface  with  bones  of  the  woolly 
rhinoceros  (R.  tick.},  reindeer  (Rangifer  tarandus),  bison 
(Bison  prisons] ,  cave  hyaena  (H.  spelaea),  and  marmot 
(Arctomys  marmotta).  The  body  had  been  laid  upon  its 
back  in  a  prepared  grave,  with  the  head  to  the  west, 
protected  by  an  arrangement  of  flat  stones,  and  with 
flexed  legs  and  arms.  Remains  of  part  of  the  leg  and 
foot  bones  of  a  wild  ox — a  food  supply  for  '  the  great 
adventure  ' — with  numerous  Mousterian  flints  lay  beside 
the  body  :  evidently  for  Mousterian  man  this  life  was 
not  the  end  of  the  story.  An  individual  of  perhaps  some 
forty  years  of  age,1  he  exhibited  the  outstanding  Nean- 
derthal features  —  the  beetling  apelike  supra-orbital 
ridges,  the  massive  jaws,  low  retreating  forehead  and 
chin,  and  projecting  occipital  region  —  that  made 
Huxley  describe  the  type-skull  in  1863  as  '  the  most 
pithecoid  of  human  crania  yet  discovered.'  2  On  the 
other  hand,  he  had  a  brain  that  was  normal  in  that 
all  the  parts  were  represented,  yet  with  a  cubic  capacity 
of  1625  c.c.,  at  least  175  c.c.  above  the  modern  average. 

1  Keith,  op.  cit.  p.  118. 

1  Evidence  as  to  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  p.  156.  In  Lyell's  Antiquity 
of  Man,  p.  84,  Huxley  is  quoted  as  calling  it  '  the  most  brutal  of  all 
known  human  skulls.' 


IMG.  14. — Restoration  of  Neanderthal  (Mousterian)  Man,  under  the  direction 
of  MODS.  Rutot.     (Hy  permission.) 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  107 

While  he  was  small  (5  feet  4  inches),  like  all  men  of  the 
Neanderthal  race,  his  forearm  and  leg,  unlike  that  of  the 
apes  and  other  ancient  and  modern  races,  were  relatively 
short,  compared  with  the  upper  arm  and  thigh.  Study 
of  the  brain -cast  suggested  to  Professors  Boule  and 
Anthony  a  human  brain  retaining  simian  traits  and  a 
degree  of  organisation  that  corresponded  to  a  mentality 
far  in  advance  of  the  ape,  yet  patently  below  that  of 
modern  man.  These  remains,  together  with  the  skeletons 
of  a  man,  woman,  and  two  children — a  family  burial — 
discovered  (1909-1911)  in  a  rock  shelter  at  La  Ferrassie, 
also  in  the  Ve"zere  Valley,  and  the  skeleton  exposed  in  1911 
at  La  Quina  in  the  department  of  Charente  immediately 
to  the  north-west  of  the  Dordogne  region,  tend  to  show 
that  the  whole  of  this  area  was  inhabited  in  Mousterian 
time  by  Neanderthal  man ;  for  Neanderthal  man  is 
essentially  Mousterian,  and  Mousterian  man  almost  with- 
out exception  is  Neanderthal  in  physical  type. 

To  the  same  horizon  are  now  referred,  in  addition  to 
other  incomplete  remains  in  France,  the  famous  Gibraltar 
skull,  which  as  found  there  in  the  Forbes  Quarry  in  1848, 
although  unrecognised  till  long  afterwards,  was  actually 
the  first  Neanderthal  skull  to  be  discovered  :  as  also  the 
remains,  principally  teeth,  found  in  1910  at  Saint- 
BreUade  in  the  Island  of  Jersey,  which  was  a  part  of  the 
Continent  in  Mousterian  times.  In  Belgium  the  Naulette 
mandible — that  of  a  woman,  a  supposition  maintained 
also  in  the  case  of  the  Piltdown  and  Gibraltar  remains — 
found  in  1866  in  a  cave  floor  at  a  depth  of  14  feet  below 
the  surface,  together  with  remains  of  the  mammoth 
(Elephas  primigenius),  woolly  rhinoceros  (R.  tick.),  cave 
bear  (Ursus  spelaeus),  reindeer  (Rangifer  tarandus),  and 
Mousterian  implements,  as  also  the  two  skeletons  found 
in  1886  at  a  depth  of  12^  feet  in  a  terrace  in  front  of  the 
Spy  cave,  8  miles  east  of  Namur,  are  also  confidently 
placed  in  this  period  because  of  their  marked  Neanderthal 
characteristics.  In  some  respects  the  Spy  forms  show 
an  advance  on  the  average  Mousterian. 


io8      THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

The  Neanderthal  type-skull,  found  with  other  bones  of 
the  skeleton,  at  a  depth  of  5  feet,  in  a  cave  on  the  left  side 
of  the  valley  of  the  Diissel  near  Elberfeld  in  Germany  in 
the  year  1857,  may  have  been  washed  or  have  fallen  into 
the  cave,  which  seems  from  LyelTs  diagram  to  have  had 
more  than  one  entrance,  for  no  animal  or  cultural  remains, 
the  tooth  of  a  bear  excepted,  appear  to  have  been  recorded 
along  with  it.  On  the  other  hand,  at  this  early  date, 
various  fossil  remains  may  not  have  been  recognised  as 
such  by  the  labourers  who  were  quarrying  there.  Several 
other  fragments,  particularly  the  mandibles  from  Malar- 
naud  and  Shipka,  and  the  two  teeth  found  in  1917  in  a 
cave  in  Malta,  would  fall  to  be  included  in  any  full  account 
of  Mousterian  osseous  remains.  A  reference  must  also 
be  made  to  the  remarkable  series  of  deposits,  showing 
nine  different  levels  marked  by  human  occupation,  in  a 
rock  shelter  at  Krapina  in  Croatia,  investigated  by 
Kramberger  during  six  years  from  1899  onwards.  Re- 
mains of  at  least  a  dozen  individuals  were  associated  with 
some  two  thousand  fragments  of  bones  of  Merck's  Rhino- 
ceros,1 the  wild  ox  or  urus  (Bos  primigenius],  mammoth, 
and  other  forms,  all  of  which  had  been  articles  of  diet, 
the  bones  in  some  cases  having  been  split  to  secure  the 
marrow.  The  fact  that  many  of  the  human  bones  have 
been  broken  across  in  a  way  to  which  there  is  nothing 
comparable  in  any  other  Palaeolithic  deposit,  has  been, 
perhaps  without  sufficient  warrant,  interpreted  as  evi- 
dence of  cannibal  practices.  Especially  instructive  were 
the  skulls  of  children,  showing  a  greater  likeness  to  modern 
children  than  did  the  adult  skeleton  to  the  skeleton  of 
modern  man.  In  the  case  of  Neanderthal  man,  as  in  the 
case  of  modern  apes,  the  characteristically  simian  massive 
eyebrow  ridges  are  adult,  and  not  adolescent,  features. 
Further,  some  of  these  Krapina  men  and  women,  while 
definitely  Neanderthal,  apparently  had  brachycephalic 
(round-headed)  skulls.  Ordinarily  the  Neanderthal  skulls 

1  The  presence  of  this  form  leads  some  authorities  to  refer  the  principal 
Krapina  deposits  to  the  Acheulean  phase. 


FIG.  15. — Front  and  left  side  views  of  skull  of  Rhodesian  Man,  showing  large 
face  with  prominent  brow-ridges ;  (about  i).  (From  British  Museum  Guide 
to  the  Fossil  Remains  of  Man  ;  by  permission.) 

Page  109. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  109 

are  dolichocephalic,  but  the  Gibraltar  specimen  is  inter- 
mediate. There  was  thus  a  certain  range  of  skeletal 
variation  in  Mousterian  times  such  as  we  continue  to  have 
to-day — perhaps  also  a  greater  range  of  distribution  than 
we  have  as  yet  discovered. 

Especially  is  this  seen  to  be  the  case  if  expert  opinion 
proves  to  be  right  in  considering  the  remains  found  in 
1921  at  the  Broken  Hill  Mine  in  Northern  Rhodesia  to  be 
connected  with  the  Neanderthal  type.  The  bones  con- 
sist of  parts  of  the  skeletons  of  two  individuals — a  nearly 
complete  skull,  tibia  (shin-bone),  and  two  ends  of  a  femur 
(thigh-bone)  of  one  individual,  and  part  of  the  upper  jaw 
and  shaft  of  the  femur  of  a  slightly  smaller  individual :  a 
sacrum  or  basal  part  of  the  vertebral  column  may  belong 
to  either.1  The  bones  have  a  remarkably  fresh  appearance 
but  were  largely  encrusted  with  tiny  crystals  of  silicate 
of  zinc.  The  skull  is  characterised  by  the  uniquely  large 
size  of  its  very  simian  face,  as  by  the  prominent  supra- 
orbital  ridges  which  extend  unusually  far  out  at  the 
external  lateral  angles  above  gaping  quadrangular  orbits, 
so  reminiscent  in  this  particular  of  the  Gibraltar  skull. 
Dr.  Smith  Woodward  notes  the  inflation  of  the  maxillary 
bones,  which  are  indented  in  the  modern  skull,  as  another 
apelike  characteristic.  The  size  of  the  face  comes  especi- 
ally from  its  great  depth,  which  is  brought  about  by  an 
unusual  lengthening  in  the  maxillary  region  below  the 
nose-opening.  This  in  turn  is  supported  by  an  abnorm- 
ally large  palate.  The  human  teeth  met  in  the  primitive 
edge-to-edge  bite.  The  skull,  which  was  poised  on  an 
erect  skeleton  and  does  not  show  the  occipital  protuber- 
ance and  depressed  character  of  a  typical  Neanderthal 
skull,  is  dolichocephalic,  with  an  estimated  brain  capacity 
of  about  1280  c.c.  The  brain  was  primitive,  and  un- 
developed in  those  particular  areas  already  referred  to  as 
concerned  with  attention,  the  finer  sensory  discrimina- 
tions, and  the  more  delicate  manipulations.  In  fact, 

1  A.  Smith  Woodward,  '  The  Problem  of  the  Rhodesian  Fossil  Man,' 
Science  Progress,  vol  xvi.  No.  64. 


no     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Professor  Elliot  Smith  considers  that  the  cranial  casts  of 
Pithecanthropus,  Eoanthropus,  Homo  rhodesiensis  (which 
he  is  on  this  account  more  inclined  to  consider  as  an  off- 
shoot from  Homo  heidelbergensis)  and  Homo  Neander- 
thalensis  show  a  progressive  advance  in  the  gradual  ex- 
pansion and  filling  out  of  the  prefrontal,  upper  parietal, 
and  inferior  temporal  areas  of  the  cortex.  This  repre- 
sents a  very  great  range  of  development  in  the  human 
brain  within  the  long  period  covered  by  the  history  of 
man  himself,  and  it  is  a  remarkable  demonstration  of  the 
inherent  truth  of  the  evolutionary  account  of  man,  that 
in  the  development  of  the  brain  of  the  individual  child, 
the  last  three  areas  to  come  into  existence  are  precisely 
the  three  instanced  above  as  having  been  the  latest 
developments  in  the  history  of  the  race.  In  other  features 
the  skull  suggests  the  modern  Australian  type  ;  the  limb 
bones  are  quite  modern.  The  fact  that  the  brow-ridges 
are  more  markedly  developed  in  Homo  rhodesiensis  than 
hi  Neanderthal  man  suggests  that  the  former  is  a  later, 
although  related,  form.  For  in  many  animal  species  such 
skeletal  excrescences  have  proved  to  be  a  premonitory 
symptom  of  racial  extinction. 

Neanderthal  man,  as  we  have  already  seen  in  part, 
had  many  distinctive  structural  features,  but  in  almost 
every  respect  he  was  more  primitive  than  modern  man. 
The  low,  depressed,  thick  skull,  with  its  exaggerated  facial 
region,  seems  almost  an  outgrowth  from  the  short,  power- 
ful neck.  Above  the  broad  nasal  bones  were  unusually 
large,  round  eye-sockets.  While  the  skull  contained  a 
brain  whose  size  (which  involves,  however,  no  necessarily 
corresponding  quality  of  texture)  was  on  the  average 
greater  than  that  of  modern  man,  yet  in  conformation  that 
brain  was  suggestively  anthropoid  :  the  skull  was  also,  as 
in  the  apes,  set  further  forward  on  the  top  of  the  vertebral 
column  than  in  modern  man.  Again,  it  is  only  in  the  skull 
of  the  chimpanzee  and  gorilla  that  we  find  to-day  the 
corresponding  development,  which  was  less  prominent 
in  females,  of  eyebrow  ridges  and  retreating  forehead. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  in 

These  ridges  were  directly  concerned  with  the  muscular 
strength  of  the  broad  massive  jaw.  The  absence  or  rudi- 
mentary state  of  the  chin  is  likewise  simian,  as  also  various 
other  anatomical  details,  particularly  those  in  the  struc- 
ture of  the  mandible,  which  point  to  a  comparatively  low 
degree  of  mobili ty  of  the  tongue.  With  sturdy  legs, short  in 
proportion  to  the  cumbrous  body,  he  probably  progressed 
with  something  between  a  crouch  and  a  slouch.  In  fact, 
as  Sir  Arthur  Keith  puts  it,  '  The  great  majority  of  those 
structural  features  which  mark  Neanderthal  species  off 
from  modern  races  are  essentially  of  a  simian  or  anthro- 
poid nature.  .  .  .  Every  bone  of  the  skeleton  has  its 
distinctive  or  specific  characters.' *  This  does  not  mean, 
however,  that  modern  man  possesses  no  simian  physical 
characteristics  in  a  greater  degree  than  Neanderthal  man. 
The  contrary  is  the  fact,  and  in  the  case  of  the  very  dis- 
tinctive Neanderthal  type  of  tooth,  it  is  the  extreme 
degree  of  specialisation  and  unlikeness  to  the  simian  and 
modern  types  alike  in  respect  of  the  shortness  of  the  roots 
and  development  of  the  pulp  cavity,  as  also  the  size  of 
the  teeth  and  the  width  of  the  palate,  that  lead  Keith, 
Klaatsch,  Boule,  and  other  authorities  to  speak  of 
Neanderthal  man  as  '  a  distinct  and  extinct  species  of 
man/  perhaps,  also,  vegetarian.  There  is  at  any  rate  no 
question  that  Neanderthal  man  presents  physical  differ- 
ences from  modern  man  greater  than  the  differences 
between  the  most  divergent  of  modern  human  races,  and 
that  it  is  not  possible  to  find  any  forms  in  the  subsequent 
periods  that  link  him  with  any  modern  types.  To  main- 
tain, however,  that  he  was  a  distinct  species  in  the 
recognised  sense  of  that  term  would  require  a  proof  of  the 
only  (although  by  no  means  absolute)  test  of  species,  viz. 
cross-sterility,  which  is  unobtainable.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  is  no  basis  for  dogmatic  statements  of  any  kind 
based  on  a  supposed  organic  unity  of  the  human  race. 

Mousterian  culture,  so  far  as  it  is  represented  in  imple- 
ments, we  have  already  seen  to  be  summarised  in  a  de- 

1  The  Antiquity  of  Man,  pp.  144,  157. 


ii2     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

velopment  of  the  Levallois  scraper.  Along  with  this  goes 
a  decline  in  the  importance  of  the  coup-de-poing.  On  the 
whole,  however,  there  is  not  the  general  advance  in 
technique  and  range  of  invention  that  might  naturally 
have  been  expected  in  so  long  and  well-defined  a  period 
as  the  Mousterian.  This  may  in  part  be  explained  by 
the  repressive  harshness  of  the  climate  and  the  gradual 
decline  of  the  race.  At  the  same  time,  this  does  not  mean 
that  Mousterian  implements  are  simply  copies  of  Acheu- 
lean  types.  There  is  some  evidence  of  industrial  evolu- 
tion, but  it  is  in  the  direction  of  '  an  economy  of  labour,' 1 
as  if  man  were  living  in  conditions  in  which  the  struggle 
for  existence  had  become  physically  intensified,  and  he 
had  no  wish  to  do  more  than  was  absolutely  necessary. 
Thus  there  is  neither  the  same  artistic  feeling  or  work- 
manship in  the  finish  of  the  average  Mousterian  imple- 
ment :  it  is  also  distinguishable  from  its  Acheulean  fore- 
runner in  being  chipped  on  one  side  of  the  flake  only. 
The  outer  surface  shows  the  impression  of  the  flakes  that 
have  been  removed  in  chipping ;  the  inner  surface  is 
smooth  except  for  the  peculiar  '  bulb  of  percussion ' 
which  arises,  owing  to  certain  physical  qualities  of  flint, 
immediately  below  the  point  at  which  the  blow  separating 
the  implement  from  the  original  nodule  was  directed. 
Sharply-pointed  coups-de-poing,  perhaps  used  for  splitting 
bones  to  get  out  the  marrow,  side-scrapers  for  service  in 
the  preparation  of  skins,  with  varieties  showing  a  scraping 
edge  now  on  both  sides,  now  at  one  end  rather  than  on 
the  side — the  latter  a  late  Mousterian  development — 
notched  scrapers  possibly  for  smoothing  rounded  wooden 
shafts,  primitive  saws  and  borers  in  flake  form,  and  im- 
plements so  delicately  chipped  at  a  definite  part  as  to 
suggest  that  they  may  have  been  employed  in  some  kind 
of  primitive  engraving  on  wood  or  bone,  are  some  of  the 
more  characteristic  types  of  Mousterian  tool.  As  the 
period  develops,  there  is  seen  to  be  a  growing  preponder- 

1  Bourlon,    '  L'industrie    moustenenne    au    Moustier,'    quoted     in 
Macalister,  op.  cit.  p.  316. 


FIG.  16. — Types  of  Mousterian  and  Aurignacian  Implements. 
Moiisterian,  I  an  1  2,  points;  3,  side  scraper.  Aurignacian,  4, 
notched  flake  ;  5*  double-edged  scraper  ;  6,  bone  implement. 
(After  de  Mortillet  and  Breuil,  from  Geikie's  Antiquity  of  Man 
in  Europe.} 

/'aft  112. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  113 

ance  of  cutting,  over  other  kinds  of,  implements,  and  the 
use  of  bone  begins  to  be  general,  not  at  first  in  a  direct 
way,  so  to  speak,  for  its  own  sake,  but  rather  as  a  means 
in  the  manufacture  or  perfecting  of  implements  of  other 
material.  Thus  bones  of  the  lower  extremities  of  horses 
and  oxen  seem  from  their  general  character  and  the 
scratches  on  them  to  have  been  used  as  anvils  on  which 
wooden  implements  were  pared  down  with  flints.  A 
scraper  with  a  curved  beak  anticipates  a  type  of  imple- 
ment that  was  developed  in  Aurignacian  times  and 
persisted  into  Mesolithic  days. 

With  an  even  wider,  and,  on  the  whole,  richer  distribu- 
tion in  Europe  than  that  of  Early  Palaeolithic  culture, 
Northern  France  and  South  Britain  excepted,  Mousterian 
man  makes  the  problem  of  his  complete  disappearance 
only  the  harder  to  understand.  The  fauna  by  which  he 
is  surrounded  testifies  eloquently  to  the  fact  that  the 
Mousterian  lived  through  the  climax  of  a  glacial  phase. 
The  woolly  rhinoceros  (R.  tichorinus)  and  the  mammoth 
(Elephas  primigenius]  with  its  coat  of  fur,  have  supplanted 
the  broad-nosed  rhinoceros  (R.  mercki)  and  the  straight- 
tusked  elephant  (E.  antiquus).  The  reindeer  (Rangifer 
tarandus),  new  to  Central  Europe,  the  Saiga  antelope 
(Saiga  tatarica),  the  Arctic  fox  (Cam's  lagopus),  the 
glutton  (Gulo  borealis),  and  the  invasion  of  Europe  as 
far  west  as  the  Thames  Valley  by  small  rodents  from 
Siberia  and  Eastern  Europe  like  the  lemmings  (Myodes 
torquatus  and  obensis)  and  different  species  of  voles 
(Arvicold)  are  evidence  of  a  radical  change  of  fauna  which 
with  the  accompanying  change  in  flora  meant  a  long, 
slow  process  of  substitution.  All  these  changing  condi- 
tions of  the  physical  environment  reacted,  on  the  whole, 
unfavourably  on  the  representatives  of  humanity  in  those 
daysj.^ 

The  attempt  to  reconstruct  the  social  and  mental  life 

of  the  Mousterian  period  would  seem  therefore  to  have 

something  of  the  element  of  tragedy  about  it.    But  it  is 

not  unrelieved.    We  are  now  dealing  with  a  people  whom 

H 


H4     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

climatic  conditions  forced  into  the  shelter  of  caves,  in  the 
mouths  of  which  they  seem  to  have  lived  their  residential 
life.  Such  small  communities  may  be  supposed  to  have 
developed  a  higher  social  system  than  that,  if  any, 
which  characterised  the  previous  nomadic  phase.  At 
any  rate  there  is  evidence  of  advance  in  certain  lines. 
Mousterian  man  assuredly  knew  the  use  of  fire ;  he 
buried  his  dead ;  he  believed  in  a  hereafter.  He  is,  in 
short,  not  merely  a  reasonable,  but  clearly  a  religious, 
being. 

It  is  outside  the  purpose  of  this  work  to  attempt  to 
enter  upon  the  vexed  question  of  the  origin  of  religion,1 
but  it  is  worth  while  to  try  and  picture  to  ourselves  some 
of  the  elements  in  this  particular  phase  of  human  history, 
which  probably  had  a  share  in  developing  the  religious 
feeling  and  belief  of  which  we  now  find  certain  definite 
expressions.  Examination  of  brain-casts  of  the  interior 
of  Mousterian  skulls,  although  a  method  of  approach 
with  very  definite  limitations,  leads,  as  we  have  seen,  to 
the  suggestion  that  while  the  organ  is  distinctively  human, 
the  marked  simian  traits  indicate  a  degree  of  organisation 
and  development  not  yet  that  of  modem  man.  The 
cubic  content  may  exceed  that  of  modern  man,  but  the 
intellectual  capacity  is  more  nearly  that  of  a  child  of  five. 
Yet  we  have  spoken  of  man  as  the  religious  creature,  and 
can  form  a  tolerably  intelligible  picture  of  the  conditions 
of  Mousterian  life  under  which  this  higher  sensitivity 
developed,  aided  by  recollection  of  that  stage  in  our  own 
early  experience  when  we  feared  to  go  along  certain  creaky 
passages  in  a  gloomy  castle,  or  take  a  particular  pathway 
in  the  twilight  through  a  wood  that  skirted  a  mysterious- 
looking  pond.  Watching,  from  the  mouth  pi  his  cave 
habitation  high  up  on  the  side  of  the  valley,  the  play  of 
the  elements  as  lightning  shivered  the  trees  below  him 
and  the  thunder-crash  accompanied  the  torrential  rains, 
Mousterian  man  must  have  felt  himself  in  the  presence 

1  Cf.  R.  R.  Marett,  The  Threshold  of  Religion,  and  Th.  Mainage, 
Les  Religions  de  la  Prehistoire. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  115 

of  Powers  that  he  did  not  understand,  and  which,  just 
because  he  did  not  understand  them,  mystified  and  even 
terrified  him.  It  was  natural  for  the  mind  of  primitive 
man  to  think  of  everything  that  showed  signs  of  move- 
ment— be  it  animate  or  inanimate  as  we  understand  these 
terms  to-day — as  invested  with  a  power  of  independent 
activity,  to  think  of  it  as  informed  by  a  spirit  such  as  he 
was  assured  of  in  himself  as  he  reflected  upon  his  dream 
life,  almost  as  real  to  him  as  his  waking  life,  or  pondered 
on  the  significance  of  his  shadow.  Later,  reflection  prob- 
ably on  calamities  caused  him  to  wonder  whether  certain 
courses  of  action  were  not  perhaps  attended  by  mis- 
fortune, whether  certain  things  should  or  should  not  be 
done.  He  felt  increasingly  that  his  life  had  some  kind  of 
relation  to  these  Powers,  that  he  was  not  alone  in  the 
world.  Convictions  arose — for  which  in  many  cases  no 
very  clear  reason  could  have  been  given,  beyond  a  vague 
association  of  some  supernatural  wonder-working  power 
(mana)  which  might  be  set  in  motion  against  him — that 
certain  places  should  be  avoided,  certain  objects  should 
not  be  touched,  certain  things  should  not  be  done — in 
short,  that  whole  restrictive,  and,  as  it  happened,  dis- 
ciplinary conception  of  life,  which  is  involved  in  tabu. 
They  became  the  convictions  of  the  community,  matters 
of  group  and  later  of  tribal  responsibility,  in  which  in- 
fraction of  a  prohibition  involved  the  group  along  with 
the  individual.  And  as  these  Powers  or  spirits,  growingly 
personalised  and  more  definitely  localised,  impressed  him 
as  the  result  of  his  experience  with  their  capacity  to  assist 
him  or  to  harm  him,  it  became  a  necessity  of  existence  to 
earn  the  goodwill  of  the  one,  or  ward  off  or  placate  the 
hurtful  intentions  of  the  other.  Hence  arose  the  whole 
conception  of  ritual  in  its  endeavours  to  conciliate,  per- 
haps even  to  control,  these  Powers.  The  setting  apart 
of  a  share  of  a  feast  developed  into  sacrifice.  Once  again, 
the  maker  of  flint  implements,  knowing  himself  as  such, 
must  at  an  early  stage  of  reflection  have  striven  to  make 
clear  to  himself  Who  in  turn  made  the  flint  nodules,  the 


n6     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

rocks,  the  trees,  the  myriad  forms  of  animal  life  around 
him. 

The  most  objective  evidence  of  the  religious  beliefs  of 
Mousterian  man  is  connected  with  the  burial  of  his  dead. 
The  facts  seem  to  express  a  belief  in  some  sort  of  a  future 
existence  that  was  a  continuation  of  the  present.  Food 
was  placed  beside  the  traveller — for  only  slowly  did  the 
spirit  extricate  itself  from  its  tenement  of  clay — and  his 
flint  implements  and  ornaments,  or  it  may  be  the  most 
prized  ones  of  those  who  were  his  friends,  were  buried  with 
him  ;  he  would  have  need  of  them.  The  interest  becomes 
evidence  of  real  affection  when  we  consider  how,  as  at 
La  Ferrassie,  flat  stones  had  been  laid  over  the  head  and 
shoulders  as  if  to  protect  them,  and  in  the  case  of  the 
youth  buried  at  Le  Moustier,  the  head  had  been  laid  on 
a  pillow  of  flint  chippings.  In  the  case  of  the  interment 
at  La  Chapelle-aux-Saints  a  hearth,  from  its  position  in 
relation  to  the  grave,  inevitably  suggests  burial  rites  and 
a  funeral  feast,  in  which  the  dead  was  believed  to  take  a 
part.  But  in  other  cases,  possibly  for  reasons  similar  to 
those  on  account  of  which  men  are  loved  or  disliked 
to-day,  there  is  evidence  which  may  be  interpreted  as  a 
desire  to  put  the  dead  man  out  of  sight  as  quickly  as 
possible.  And  this  may  very  easily  have  passed  over 
into  fear  of  the  power  of  his  spirit  to  return  and  work  evil. 
Often  the  Mousterian  dead  were  buried  in  a  trussed  sort 
of  fashion,  with  the  knees  drawn  up  tightly  under  the 
chin,  and  it  is  supposed  that  the  corpse  may  even  have 
been  bound  with  leathern  thongs  in  that  position  in  an 
endeavour  to  hamper  the  movements  of  the  departed, 
and  prevent  him  coming  back  to  molest  his  enemies. 
There  are  no  positive  indications  at  this  stage  of  a  worship 
of  the  dead,  still  less  that  burial  was  accorded  to  all. 

What  exactly  were  the  conditions  under  which  the 
conviction  of  a  possible  hereafter  entered  the  mind  of 
man  we  have  no  means  of  knowing.  In  a  moving  passage 
Macalister  dwells  on  the  rigour  of  Mousterian  life  '  passed 
in  gloomy  and  awe-inspiring  caves,  which  resounded  with 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  117 

the  flutterings  of  bats  and  with  the  shrieks  of  owls '  as 
an  element  in  inevitably  turning  the  thoughts  of  the 
Mousterians  to  the  terrors  of  the  Unseen.  '  The  cave- 
folk  went  to  sleep  as  night  fell,  and  awoke  on  the  follow- 
ing day  ;  but  one  by  one  they  would  fall  into  a  different 
kind  of  sleep,  from  which  they  could  not  be  aroused. 
Then  the  survivors  would  ask  of  one  another  the  question 
of  questions,  which  has  passed  down  ever  since  from 
graveside  to  graveside  through  the  generations — if  a  man 
die,  shall  he  live  again  ?  As  they  sat  round  the  fires  and 
discussed  this  momentous  problem,  one  would  tell  of  a 
dream  that  he  had  had,  in  which  the  dead  had  appeared 
to  him  ;  another  would  relate  how  something,  he  knew 
not  what,  but  which  surely  was  not  of  the  common  things 
of  nature,  had  startled  him  when  he  was  wandering  abroad 
in  the  gloom  of  the  forest.  With  the  weird  dancing 
shadows  cast  by  the  fire  on  the  rocky  wall  of  their  cave, 
with  the  wild  noises  of  nocturnal  nature  all  around  them, 
small  wonder  that  they  found  to  their  question  an  affirma- 
tive answer.  Already  even  the  lowly  Mousterian  Man, 
degenerate  though  he  may  have  been,  was  conscious  of 
something  more  than  merely  animal  within  him  :  already 
he  had  begun  to  look  forward  to  a  life  beyond  the  grave — 
a  life  like  that  to  which  he  was  accustomed,  for  he  could 
conceive  of  none  other,  where  he  would  need  food  and 
clothing,  and  the  instruments  for  procuring  them.  As  his 
comrades  passed,  each  in  his  turn,  into  the  silent  land,  he 
laid  beside  their  bodies  such  things  as  he  imagined  would 
minister  to  their  necessities  in  the  mysterious  otherworld. 
'  How  far  that  otherworld  was  conceived  of  as  being 
governed  by  beings  more  than  human,  we  have  no  means 
of  knowing.  But  it  would  seem  psychologically  scarcely 
possible  for  a  community  to  imagine  an  entirely  atheistic 
otherworld.  The  "  gods  "  may  be  men,  beasts,  insects, 
monsters,  what  you  will :  but  we  may  reasonably  look 
upon  Mousterian  man  as  being,  within  the  inevitable 
limitations  of  our  knowledge,  the  first  seeker  after  God.'  l 

»  Op.  cit.  pp.  343,  344. 


n8     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

It  is  a  startling  thought  that  mayhap  to  the  dying 
Mousterian  race  came  the  first  glimmerings  of  immortality. 
On  the  objective  facts  Macalister  is  right  in  maintaining 
that  Mousterian  man  was  '  the  first  seeker  after  God.' 
But  we  must  not  forget  that  he  was  directly  connected 
with  previous  stages  of  humanity  whose  mental  capacity, 
so  far  as  the  uncertain  methods  of  judging  of  it  teach  us, 
was  not  very  far  below  that  of  the  Mousterian.  Chellean 
man  was  man,  and  if  the  cubic  capacity  of  a  Mousterian 
brain  was  over  1600  c.c.,  yet  that  of  Eoanthropus  was 
about  1400,  corresponding,  if  a  female  skull,  to  a  male 
capacity  of  about  1550  c.c.  It  is  probably  the  case  that 
in  the  open-air  nomadic  life  of  the  Chellean  and  Acheulean 
periods,  man  may  have  disposed  of  his  dead  more  un- 
concernedly, leaving  them  unburied  as  he  moved  on  in 
the  morning  to  a  new  hunting-ground,  or  covering  them 
simply  with  boughs  and  leaves.  The  more  settled  life 
of  the  Mousterian  community  may  have  induced  more 
thought  upon  life  and  the  dead  from  whom  they  could 
not  get  away.  But  wherever  he  is,  man  cannot  get  away 
from  his  thoughts,  and  the  probability  seems  to  be  that 
at  whatever  stage  he  first  began  to  reflect — at  whatever 
stage  he  began  first,  intermittently  doubtless,  to  wonder 
at  the  things  he  did  not  understand,  and  that  stage  was 
certainly  long  pre-Mousterian — he  had  begun  to  move 
towards  the  conception  of  a  Power  or  Powers  in  the  world 
other  than  himself  which  stood  in  some  sort  of  determin- 
ing relation  to  him,  and  of  himself  as  possessed  by  an 
invisible  form  of  being  which  might  persist  apart  from 
his  body.  In  short,  Archaeology  does  not  gainsay  the 
suggestion  that  from  the  beginning  of  rational,  i.e.  of 
human,  life,  God  '  set  eternity  ' l  and  some  knowledge  of 
Himself,  in  the  heart  of  man. 

i  Eccles.  3  ». 


CHAPTER  VI 

PALEOLITHIC  MAN  (continued) 

C.  Late  Palaeolithic 

(i)  Aurignacian 

WE  have  stated  that  the  application  of  distinct  names  to 
the  different  systems  of  the  geological  eras,  as  to  the 
various  phases  of  Palaeolithic  culture,  is  apt  to  suggest  a 
discontinuity,  comparable  to  that  represented  by  the  use 
of  these  separate  words,  which  does  not  exist  in  reality. 
To  this  as  to  all  such  statements  there  are  exceptions,  one 
of  which  meets  us  at  the  close  of  the  Mousterian.  The 
Aurignacian  cultural  strata  lie  immediately  above  the 
former,  distinctive  in  actual  human  remains  and  imple- 
ments, and  without  the  requisite  evidence  in  the  way  of 
transitional  forms  that  would  imply  continuity  of  develop- 
ment. We  saw  reason  to  believe  that  under  the  stress  of 
climatic  adversity,  the  insanitary  conditions  of  cave  life, 
and  possibly,  as  has  also  been  suggested,  the  effects  of 
inbreeding  in  these  small  communities,  a  racial  deteriora- 
tion set  in,  and  that  in  consequence  the  debilitated 
Mousterians  were  unable  to  withstand  the  irruption  of  a 
new  population  who  entered  Europe  with  a  civilisation 
of  their  own.  It  was  perhaps  the  first  example  of  a  situa- 
tion that  has  recurred  at  different  periods  in  history. 
How  far  the  Aurignacians  carried  on  an  actual  war  of 
extermination  against  the  Mousterians  we  do  not  know. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  latter  with  their  well-marked 
characteristics  disappeared  as  a  race,  and  no  people  can 
be  confidently  indicated  who  can  be  looked  on  as  their 


120     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

evolutionary  descendants.  At  the  same  time,  there  are 
suggestions  in  the  blended  types  discovered  at  Predmost 
in  Moravia  that  possibly  at  a  later  stage  some  of  the 
invaders  and  the  last  of  the  Mousterians  may  have  become 
reconciled. 

But  who  were  the  Aurignacians,  and  whence  did  they 
come  ?  The  question  may  help  in  its  own  solution  if  we 
proceed  to  the  examination  of  Aurignacian  human  remains 
and  handicraft,  but  it  can  only  be  tentatively  answered 
even  after  consideration  of  the  Late  Palaeolithic  phase 
as  a  whole.  Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  Aurignacians 
who  were  the  first  Palaeolithic  people  to  be  discovered, 
for  to  this  stage,  on  the  basis  of  the  flint  implements  and 
the  ornaments  and  implements  in  ivory  and  bone,  are 
referred  the  very  imperfect  skeleton  found  by  Dean 
Buckland  in  1822  in  the  Paviland  Cave,  South  Wales, 
the  Engis  skull  of  1833,  and,  most  important  of  all,  the 
corresponding  but  fuller  collection  of  objects  found  by 
Edouard  Lartet  in  1860  in  the  floor  of  a  cave  on  the  side 
of  a  hill  near  the  village  of  Aurignac  in  Haute  Garonne. 
There  at  a  depth  of  two  to  three  feet  he  found  evidence  of 
the  association  of  man  with  the  cave  bear  ( Ursus  spelaeus) , 
cave  lion  (Felts  spelaea),  cave  hyaena  (H.  spelaea), 
mammoth  (Elephas  primigenius),  woolly  rhinoceros  (R. 
tick.},  bison  (B.  priscus),  and  Irish  elk  (Cervus  giganteus), 
together  with  modern  forms,  which  had  all  been  used  by 
him  in  different  ways  for  food  and  ornamentation  and 
tool  formation.  In  these  three  localities  the  same  kind 
of  touch  was  noticeable  in  the  handicraft,  fashioning  the 
same  ideas — tools  of  flint,  carvings  in  ivory,  necklaces  of 
shells  or  perforated  teeth,  implements  in  ivory  and  bone 
or  the  antlers  of  reindeer.  Eight  years  passed,  however, 
before  Louis  Lartet  discovered  four  adult  skeletons  in  a 
rock  shelter  at  Cromagnon  in  the  valley  of  the  Vezere 
(Dordogne),  which  the  associated  cultural  remains  showed 
to  be  referable  to  the  now  established  Aurignacian  phase. 
They  were  tall  individuals  (5  feet  10  inches  and  over),  with 
large  skulls  whose  brain  capacity  was  also  considerably 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  121 

above  the  modern  average.1  This  is  a  remarkable  circum- 
stance, even  if  we  know  on  other  grounds  that  a  man's 
intellectual  qualities  bear  no  relation  to  the  size  of  his  hat. 
We  are  evidently  dealing  with  a  highly  developed  race, 
and  it  is  worthy  of  notice  that  within  the  period  of  time 
from  the  Aurignacian  to  the  present  day — say  twenty-five 
thousand  years — there  has  been  no  advance  in  cranial 
cubic  content.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  Aurignacian 
period  there  is,  further,  evidence  of  a  very  wide  range  of 
diversity  in  cranial  cubic  content  and  other  features  that 
leads  Sir  Arthur  Keith  to  state  that '  at  Cromagnon  .  .  . 
we  meet  with  another  race  of  men.' 2  Of  the  four  adult 
skeletons,  one  of  them,  usually  referred  to  as  '  the  Old  Man 
of  Cromagnon,'  is  probably  better  known  than  any  other 
individual  in  Archaeology :  at  any  rate,  more  is  known 
of  him.  The  skull  was  markedly  dolichocephalic,  with 
a  cranial  capacity  which  is  usually  given  as  1590  c.c.8 
The  cheek-bones  were  particularly  prominent,  the  orbits 
rectangular  rather  than  round,  though  with  rounded 
angles.  There  were  no  supra-orbital  ridges,  and  the  nose 
and  chin  were  well  developed. 

One  of  the  best  Aurignacian  sites  is  the  Grimaldi  series 
of  caves,  near  Mentone,  close  to  the  shore  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, about  200  yards  on  the  eastern  side  of  the 
Franco-Italian  frontier.  A  small  museum  has  been 
erected  in  the  immediate  vicinity,  in  which  many  of  the 
discoveries  are  systematically  exposed.  The  cave  deposits 
are  Aurignacian  throughout,  and  their  great  interest  is 
that  the  skeletons  of  sixteen  individuals  of  widely  different 
ages  have  been  found  at  the  various  levels.  In  the 
Grotte  des  Enfants  there  were  31  feet  of  deposits,  through- 
out which  at  different  levels  as  many  as  nine  ancient 
hearth  floors  were  found  :  of  these  the  two  lowest  were 
Early  or  Middle  Palaeolithic.  Associated  with  these 

1  1480  c.c.  «  The  Antiquity  of  Man,  p.  54. 

•  Keith's  estimate  of  this  (?)  Cromagnon  brain  is  1660  c.c.  (The 
Antiquity  of  Man,  p.  55)  about  180  c.c.  above  the  modern  average, 
and  seems  the  more  likely,  if  that  of  1550  c.c.  for  a  female  subject 
amongst  the  same  group  of  four  is  correct. 


122     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

deposits  were  ornaments  and  implements  in  stone  and 
bone,  together  with  remains  of  the  typical  fauna  brought 
to  light  in  the  original  Aurignacian  station — cave  lion 
(Felis  spelaea),  cave  bear  (Ursus  spelaeus),  and  cave 
hyaena  (H.  spelaea).  The  woolly  rhinoceros  (R.tich.)  and 
the  mammoth  (Elephas  primigenius)  had  apparently  not 
come  so  far  south,  but  in  the  lowest  stratum  were  the 
remains  of  even  older  forms,  the  broad-nosed  rhinoceros 
(R.  mercki)  and  the  straight-tusked  elephant  (E.  antiquus). 
It  looks  as  if  the  caves  had  been  first  inhabited  towards 
the  onset  of  a  glacial  episode. 

All  the  skeletons  showed  unmistakable  evidence  of 
having  been  definitely  buried.  Indeed,  in  the  case  of  an 
old  woman  whose  remains  lay  in  the  second  stratum  from 
the  top,  there  was  evidence  to  suggest  that  the  body  had 
been  scraped  up  by  hyaenas,  carried  off,  recovered  and 
reburied,  thus  showing  incidentally  a  notable  develop- 
ment of  regard  for  the  dead  on  the  part  of  her  contem- 
poraries. The  two  young  children  from  whom  the  cave 
took  its  name  had  been  interred  in  the  top  stratum,  lying 
on  their  backs  with  their  heads  to  the  west,  apparently 
having  been  buried  in  some  kind  of  mantle  or  apron 
composed  of  seashells.  At  the  fourth  level  from  the 
bottom  the  skeleton  of  a  very  tall  man  of  this  Cromagnon 
race  (6  feet  2|  inches)  was  interred,  also  on  his  back,  with 
a  slab  of  red  sandstone  under  his  head,  and  a  flat  stone 
over  it  for  protection,  while  large  stones  were  grouped 
around  his  feet.  His  body  had  been  decorated  and  his 
head  crowned  with  garments  or  ornaments  composed,  at 
any  rate  in  part,  of  shells,  while  a  worked  piece  of  a  deer's 
antler  lay  close  by.  At  the  third  level  from  the  bottom, 
over  25  feet  beneath  the  surface,  two  other  skeletons  were 
found,  one  of  a  woman  and  (possibly)  her  son  of  about 
sixteen  years,  but  in  their  case  the  skeletons  lay  drawn 
up  in  a  contracted  posture.  In  both  cases  the  head  was 
protected  by  a  slab  of  stone  resting  on  two  others  ;  and 
the  bodies  had  been  decorated  with  ornaments  composed 
possibly  of  a  leathern  ground  covered  with  perforated 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  123 

shells.  These  skeletons  showed  definite  negroid  features. 
While  it  is  possible  to  make  too  much  of  these  characters 
— for  it  is  a  very  questionable  procedure  to  posit  a  race 
on  the  basis  of  two  individuals — one  of  which  indeed  is  ap- 
parently common  to  all  the  known  Aurignacian  skeletons, 
it  is  interesting  to  note  this  degree  of  differentiation  within 
a  race  so  far  back  in  the  Palaeolithic.  It  may  have  been 
the  result  of  a  mixture  of  races.  The  remains  from  the 
other  Grimaldi  caves  add  very  little  that  is  distinctive 
to  our  knowledge,  other  than  the  fact  that  the  bones  of 
the  skeletons  were  sometimes  treated  with  an  ochreous 
powder  which  stained  them  red  :  possibly  the  Grimaldi 
people  also  painted  the  living  body.  There  was,  further, 
a  certain  variety  in  the  design  and  composition  of  the 
tiaras,  and  head  and  neck  bands  with  which  the  dead 
were  decorated,  as  also  of  the  flint  implements  occasion- 
ally buried  with  them. 

To  the  same  period  has  been  referred  the  Briinn  skele- 
ton 1  found  (1891)  in  the  vicinity  of  typical  Aurignacian 
cultural  and  faunal  remains  at  a  depth  of  n£  feet  in  the 
town  of  that  name,  somewhat  puzzling  in  its  combination 
of  Middle  and  Late  Palaeolithic  characters,  as  also  the 
even  more  aberrant  skeleton  brought  to  light  by  the 
exploratory  work  of  M.  O.  Hauser  in  1909  on  a  terrace 
high  up  on  the  side  of  a  valley  at  Combe  Capelle  in  the 
Dordogne  region.  At  a  depth  of  over  seven  feet,  beneath 
strata  showing  evidence  of  Solutrean  and  widely  separated 
phases  of  Aurignacian  culture,  the  latter  remains  were 
found  definitely  buried,  with  the  thighs  drawn  up,  and 
with  an  abundance  of  flints  and  perforated  shells  beside 
them.  Unlike  the  Cromagnon  variety  of  Aurignacian  man, 
the  Combe  Capelle  skeleton  was  that  of  a  short  man  (5 
feet  2  inches)  with  a  long  skull  and  narrow  face,  having 
a  cranial  capacity  (1440  c.c.)  slightly  under  the  modern 
average.  Whether  the  peculiarities  are  individual  or 
racial  it  is  impossible  to  say.  The  fact  that  the  Cromagnon 

1  So  e.g.  Boule.  Other  investigators  refer  it  to  the  subsequent 
Solutrean. 


124     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

people  had  '  dysharmonic '  heads  like  the  Esquimaux  of 
to-day,  i.e.  showing  the  unusual  combination  of  dolicho- 
cephaly  (long-headedness)  with  a  broad  face,  has  sug- 
gested to  some  anatomists  that  they  had  their  origin  in 
a  blend,  and  that  this  true  dolichocephalic  individual — 
for  there  was  nothing  to  distinguish  him  from  many 
Europeans  to-day — may  represent  a  reversion  to  one  of 
the  parent  types.1 

The  description  of  the  fauna  found  in  the  type  station 
of  Aurignac  at  the  base  of  that  stage  was  still  markedly 
that  of  a  glacial  phase,  and  there  is  evidence  of  a  regular 
invasion  of  Europe,  as  we  have  also  seen,  by  small  Arctic 
rodents  at  the  close  of  the  Mousterian  and  the  beginning 
of  the  Aurignacian  phase.  As  the  latter  progressed 
through  tundra  to  steppe  conditions,  these  rodents  dis- 
appeared, and  the  reindeer,  mammoth,  and  woolly 
rhinoceros  went  with  them.  The  most  distinctive  repre- 
sentative of  the  Aurignacian  fauna  in  Europe  is  the  horse, 
testifying  to  the  steppe  conditions  of  physical  geography 
and  climate  which  were  the  dominant  features  of  that 
phase. 

The  Aurignacian  industry  is  sometimes  divided  into 
three  stages — Lower,  Middle,  and  Upper.  The  physical 
distinctiveness  of  Cromagnon  man  as  compared  with  his 
Mousterian  predecessor,  the  mental  development  implicit 
in  the  pictorial  craft  of  this  phase,  and  the  absence  of 
any  really  transitional  forms  of  implement  compel  archae- 
ologists to  regard  such  Mousterian  forms  as  side-scrapers, 
points,  and  coups-de-poing  lying  in  some  Lower  Aurig- 
nacian stations  as  actual  Mousterian  implements  found 
by  the  invaders  in  some  Mousterian  site  occupied  by  them, 
and  used,  perhaps  occasionally  duplicated,  by  them.  But 
in  addition  the  Aurignacians  had  their  own  tools,  amongst 
which  may  be  mentioned  the  so-called  Chatelperron  knife 
— a  flake  with  one  side  secondarily  chipped  on  a  curve 
ending  in  a  sharp  point,  while  the  opposite  side  remains 
sharp  and  straight,  with  the  butt  usually  rounded — various 

1  See  Macalister,  op.  cit.  pp.  359,  360. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  125 

kinds  of  end-scrapers,  and  engravers  with  which  Aurig- 
nacian man  fashioned  and  engraved  his  most  charac- 
teristic implements  of  bone  and  horn,  more  rarely,  ivory. 
Bone  in  fact  is  more  characteristic  of  the  Late  Palaeo- 
lithic than  stone,  although  in  the  Lower  Aurignacian  the 
development  has  not  got  past  prickers — some  of  them 
looking  like  the  most  primitive  of  bodkins — and  other 
flat  slips  of  bone  whose  purpose  is  more  obscure,  and  to 
which  the  general  name  of  '  polishers '  has  been  given. 
The  Middle  Aurignacian  is  distinguished  by  the  develop- 
ment of  a  thick  type  of  end-scraper,  which  from  its  general 
resemblance  to  an  inverted  boat  is  spoken  of  as  '  carinate,' 
certain  peculiar  knife-like  flakes  with  a  notch  on  one  or 
both  sides,  many  types  of  engraver,  and  a  finer  and  smaller 
variety  of  the  Chatelperron  knife  known  as  the  Gravette 
point.  In  the  Upper  Aurignacian  this  reduction  in  size 
in  flint  implements  is  even  more  marked.  This  stage  was 
also  marked  by  the  first  use  of  bone  needles  with  eyes,  and 
the  appearance  of  pendants  and  the  problematical  baton 
de  commandement,  whose  use  was  more  general  in  the 
succeeding  phases. 

The  mentality  of  Aurignacian  man  and  his  successors 
is  best  seen,  however,  in  connection  with  their  art.  The 
fact  that  expression  in  sculpture,  engraving,  and  painting 
is  a  totally  new  phenomenon  in  Europe,  encountered  for 
the  first  time  in  the  Late  Palaeolithic  deposits,  is  one  of 
the  many  circumstances  that  suggest  a  break  between 
the  Mousterians  and  Aurignacians,  although  this  means 
a  continuity  of  pre- Aurignacian  development  elsewhere. 
The  discovery  of  the  evidence  of  Palaeolithic  Art  was 
made  comparatively  early — thus  the  mural  paintings  in 
the  cave  of  Altamira,  near  Santander,  in  N.-E.  Spain  were 
discovered  in  1879,  while  an  engraved  figure  had  been 
recognised  as  far  back  as  1834  in  the  cave  of  Chaff aud 
(Vienne).  But  at  that  time,  in  view  of  the  comparatively 
slight  knowledge  of  prehistory,  it  seemed  almost  ridiculous 
to  think  of  art  in  connection  with  the  wild  herald  of  the 
race,  or  imagine  the  primeval  savage  amidst  the  half 


126     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

brutal  conditions  of  his  existence  with  that  struggling 
within  him  which  only  came  to  a  full  birth  in  a  Holbein 
or  a  Rembrandt — struggling  so  that  he  must  needs  find 
relief  in  these  strange  flint  pencillings  that  testify  as  with 
the  speaking  silence  of  the  night  to  the  spirit  of  the  man. 
But  the  criticism  engendered  of  these  early  doubts  has 
only  resulted  in  the  more  complete  establishment  and 
general  acceptance  of  the  evidence. 

Aurignacian  art  took  various  forms,  but  it  is  doubtful 
if  the  different  phases  that  are  sometimes  noted  in  Europe 
stood  in  an  exactly  developmental  relation  to  one  another. 
In  any  case,  such  a  view  would  not  accord  very  well  with 
the  other  indications  which  point  to  the  arrival  in  Europe 
of  a  fully  developed  Aurignacian  stock.  The  evidence 
includes  detached  sculptures  of  objects  in  stone,  ivory, 
reindeer  antlers,  and  horn.  So  far  as  they  have  been 
preserved,  these  are  all  of  the  human  female  figure,  often 
with  a  gross  exaggeration  of  details.  In  some  cases  the 
hair  is  represented  as  braided,  but  it  is  difficult  to  draw 
any  conclusions  from  them  as  to  the  physiognomy  of 
Aurignacian  woman.  All  these  figures  are  Late  Aurig- 
nacian, and  of  little  aesthetic  value.  The  human  figure, 
male  and  female,  is  also  sculptured  in  relief,  as  in  the 
rock  shelter  at  Laussel  (Dordogne).  The  age  of  these 
specimens  of  Aurignacian  art  is  established  by  the  imple- 
ments associated  with  them,  and  the  configuration  of 
adjacent  beds  in  the  case  of  fixtures.  Then,  again,  out- 
lines of  animals  have  been  engraved  or  deeply  scratched 
on  the  walls  of  caves,  as  e.g.  at  Pair-non-Pair  (Gironde), 
Les  Combarelles  (Dordogne),  and  elsewhere.  In  several 
cases  the  engravings  have  been  made  on  the  inner  walls 
of  the  caverns,  sometimes  in  actual  recesses  :  small  stone 
cups  have  been  found  in  the  contemporary  deposits  which 
give  evidence  of  having  been  used  as  lamps.  In  some 
cases  the  outlines  of  animals  have  been  superposed  over 
those  of  others.  In  one  or  two  instances  traces  of  ochre 
and  black  colouring  were  detected  which  had  been  used 
to  help  to  bring  out  the  lines  in  the  engraving.  In  the 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  127 

cave  drawings  of  Les  Combarelles  more  than  a  hundred 
different  animals  have  been  recognised,  principally  the 
horse,  buffalo,  reindeer,  mammoth,  ibex,  bear,  etc.  ;  less 
rarely  patterns  and  '  tectiform '  designs  are  outlined. 
Actually  the  oldest  Aurignacian  paintings  are  the  stencilled 
silhouettes  of  human  hands  which  have  been  found  upon 
the  walls  of  the  Gargas  cave  near  Aventignan  (Hautes- 
Pyre"ne"es),  and  elsewhere.  The  fact  that  the  hand  thus 
represented  is  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  the  left, 
suggests  that  right-handedness  had  already  become  a 
dominant  human  character.  Many  of  the  silhouetted 
fingers  appear  to  lack  one  or  more  joints,  which  is  accepted 
as  evidence  of  a  practice  of  mutilation  not  unknown 
amongst  primitive  peoples  to-day,  an  explanation  which 
would  carry  more  conviction  if  any  Aurignacian  skeleton 
had  been  found  lacking  such  joints.  The  results  do  not 
seem  impossible  of  attainment  by  simply  bending  the 
fingers,  and  there  is  structural  evidence  of  greater  flexi- 
bility in  the  hand  and  fingers  of  Palaeolithic  man  than  in 
modern  man.  In  addition  to  these  hand-silhouettes,  the 
walls  of  the  Gargas  cave  are  adorned  at  places  with  groups 
of  red  dots  in  an  irregular  and  undeciphered  arrangement, 
while  on  the  walls  of  the  caves  at  Font-de-Gaume,  La 
Mouthe,  Les  Combarelles,  Altamira,  and  elsewhere,  are 
very  remarkable  coloured  outlines  of  animals  in  black 
or  in  red.  Sometimes  these  representations  are  em- 
bellished by  means  of  strokes  or  stippling,  painted  or 
engraved  :  the  stippling  in  particular  gives  an  added 
effect  of  relief.  Aurignacian  art  is  essentially  line  work  ; 
it  was  not  till  Magdalenian  times  that  we  get  the  whole 
surface  of  the  figure  treated  with  colour. 

The  Aurignacian  culture  was  widespread  in  Europe, 
extending  at  any  rate  from  Wales  in  the  west  to  Czecho- 
slovakia in  the  east,  and  as  far  south  as  the  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean.  In  Great  Britain,  however,  there  is  not 
the  same  wealth  of  Late,  as  of  Middle,  or  even  possibly 
Lower,  Palaeolithic  material.  In  addition  to  the  Pavi- 
land  Cave,  Aurignacian  remains  have  been  described  with 


128     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

most  certainty  in  connection  with  deposits  in  the  Robin 
Hood  Cave  in  the  Cresswell  Crags  (Derbyshire),  and 
Brixham  (Devonshire).  In  Italy,  a  country  where,  owing 
possibly  to  climatic  reasons,  Palaeolithic  man  does  not 
seem  to  have  made  so  much  progress  as  in  the  regions 
farther  north,  the  Aurignacian  is  the  only  Late  Palaeo- 
lithic phase  that  is  represented.  While  Northern  France 
is  poor,  Southern  France  is  peculiarly  rich  in  Aurignacian 
deposits,  some  of  the  stations,  as  e.g.  Le  Ruth  near  Le 
Moustier  (Dordogne),  providing,  as  the  result  of  long 
habitation,  very  complete  series  of  the  different  phases 
of  Late  Palaeolithic  life ;  they  are  only  less  abundant 
in  Spain.  In  Germany  also  the  Aurignacian  is  well 
represented,  caves  like  der  Sirgenstein  in  the  Achtal  being 
peculiarly  rich  in  sequences  and  actual  remains.  In  the 
regions  covered  to-day  by  Austria,  Hungary  and  Czecho- 
slovakia, there  is  a  number  of  important  Aurignacian 
sites,  notably  at  Willendorf  on  the  Danube  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Krems,  where  eight  successive  layers  of 
occupation  have  yielded  a  very  clear  picture  of  the 
development  of  Aurignacian  handicraft. 

(ii)  Solutrean 

The  records  of  Solutrean  history  are  more  scant — re- 
markably so  in  the  case  of  a  people  about  whom  some 
very  definite  assertions  have  been  made.  Yet  it  was  only 
as  recently  as  1895  that  the  Abbe"  Breuil  finally  estab- 
lished the  fact  of  the  existence  of  two  well-marked  periods 
of  culture,  the  Solutrean  and  Magdalenian,  as  lying 
between  the  Aurignacian  and  Neolithic  times.  The 
Solutrean  culture  takes  its  name  from  the  contents  of  the 
remarkable  deposits  near  the  village  of  Solutre  in  the 
region  of  the  Saone,  opened  up  by  Arcelin,  de  Perry,  and 
others,  from  1866  onwards.  This  open  Palaeolithic 
habitation  covered  more  than  two  acres  on  a  slope  rising 
from  the  river  to  a  face  of  rock,  the  interglacial  weather- 
ing of  which  had  resulted  in  the  formation  of  a  layer  that 


130     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

covered  up  the  ancient  levels  of  occupation.  These  de- 
posits covered  the  original  land  surface  to  a  total  depth 
of  34  feet.  At  the  bottom  were  found  Mousterian  imple- 
ments. Above  these  were  characteristic  Aurignacian 
layers  with  a  peculiar  '  equine  '  layer  from  15  to  20  inches 
in  thickness,  some  10  feet  below  the  surface,  composed 
mainly  of  the  broken  and  charred  bones  of  horses.  Arcelin 
estimated  that  these  Aurignacians  had  consumed  at  least 
one  hundred  thousand  wild  horses,  captured  solely  for 
food :  there  is  no  hint  yet  of  the  domestication  of  the 
horse  or  indeed  of  any  other  animal.  Numerous  remains 
of  hearths  and  typical  Aurignacian  flint  implements  were 
found  in  association  with  this  '  equine  '  layer.  Other 
animal  remains  found  at  this  level  were  those  of  the 
mammoth,  cave  lion,  cave  bear,  hyaena,  hare  (Lagomys 
pusillus),  marmot  (Arctomys  marmotta),  and  various 
species  of  deer  and  antelope.  Next  to  the  horse,  remains 
of  the  reindeer  are  most  in  evidence,  the  increase  again 
in  this  animal  betokening  a  change  from  the  Aurignacian 
steppe  conditions  to  that  of  tundra  in  the  Solutrean 
phase,  foreshadowing  a  later  revival  of  glacial  conditions. 

The  Solutrean  stratum  proper — likewise  covered  and 
sealed  up  by  deposits  formed  by  the  continued  weathering 
of  the  rock  face — lay  above  the  '  equine  '  layer,  with  which 
it  showed  several  points  of  contrast.  Not  merely  did  the 
Solutreans  leave  traces  of  their  hearths,  but  also  their 
graves.  The  former  show  that  their  principal  article  of 
diet  was  the  reindeer,  although  horse  flesh  was  still  eaten. 
The  hearth  burials  seem  to  imply  interment  of  the  dead 
in  huts  similar  to  those  in  which  they  had  lived,  and 
so  point  to  a  conception  of  a  future  life  analogous  in 
conditions  to  the  present. 

Remains  of  Solutrean  man  are  only  less  rare  than  those 
of  Early  Palaeolithic  man.  Several  of  the  discovered 
skeletons  have  not  yet  been  fully  described.  Certain 
deep-lying  beds  near  Predmost  in  Czecho-Slovakia  have 
yielded  a  rich  series  of  steppe  and  tundra  forms,  including 
the  mammoth,  woolly  rhinoceros,  horse,  urus,  bison, 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  131 

musk  ox,  Alpine  ibex,  reindeer,  moose,  red  deer,  banded 
lemming,  cave  lion,  cave  hyaena,  glutton,  and  the 
Arctic  fox,  as  also  twenty  human  skeletons  in  differing 
states  of  preservation.  '  The  skulls,  of  which  ten  were 
found  perfect,  displayed  the  sloping  Mousterian  forehead 
and  the  conspicuous  brow-ridges,  but  in  a  less  marked 
degree  than  the  full-blooded  Mousterian.' l  Another  im- 
portant fossil  is  the  skeleton  already  referred  to  as  exposed 
during  some  digging  operations  in  the  town  of  Briinn,  the 
capital  of  Moravia,  in  1891,  at  a  depth  of  n£  feet.  A 
number  of  other  interesting  objects  were  found  with  these 
remains,  including  a  large  mammoth  tusk  and  an  ivory 
statuette.  The  skull,  like  those  of  Predmost,  shows  an 
interesting  combination  of  Middle  and  Late  Palaeolithic 
characters.  The  brow-ridges  are  still  there,  but  the  fore- 
head is  higher  and  less  sloping  than  in  Mousterian  man. 
As  with  some  of  the  Aurignacian  skeletons,  the  bones 
were  in  this  case  stained  with  ochre.  The  Briix  skull 
(Bohemia)  discovered  in  1871  has  been  stated  by  Schwalbe 
to  be  also  intermediate  between  Mousterian  and  modern 
man  :  in  fact,  he  finds  close  resemblances  between  it  and 
that  of  the  native  Australian.  On  the  whole,  however, 
the  Solutrean  human  remains  are  disappointingly  few. 
We  can  only  say  with  Macalister  that  '  the  Solutreans 
of  Eastern  Europe  seem  to  be  intermediate  between  the 
Mousterians  and  the  Aurignacians  in  some  respects  ;  and 
that  as  for  the  Solutreans  of  Western  Europe,  we  know 
nothing  whatever  about  their  racial  position,'  for  the 
simple  reason  that  as  yet  no  undoubted  West  European 
Solutrean  skeleton  has  come  to  light.2 

Now,  this  is  the  more  remarkable,  because  their  tool 
industry  is  quite  distinctive.  In  fact,  no  more  beautiful 
flint  flaking  was  ever  done  than  that  by  Solutrean  hands. 
Their  characteristic '  laurel-leaf '  and '  willow-leaf '  shaped 
javelin-heads  show  a  most  delicate  secondary  chipping  all 

1  Macalister,  op.  cit.  p.  374. 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  376.  It  is  possible,  however,  that  certain  remains 
from  the  Grotte  du  Placard  (Charente)  are  West  Solutrean. 


I32     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

over  the  surfaces  of  both  sides,  supposed  to  have  been 
produced  by  pressure  with  a  bone  flaking-tool  rather 
than  by  blows.  The  same  artistry  was  applied  to  their 
borers  and  scrapers,  which  in  general  design  were  similar 
to  those  of  the  preceding  phase,  although  the  carinate 
form  is  unknown.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Solutreans 
show  no  advance — rather  the  reverse — upon  the  Aurig- 
nacians  in  bone  work,  while  their  pictorial  art,  apart  from 
the  application  of  sculpture  in  the  round  to  the  representa- 
tion of  animals,  also  records  a  decline  from  the  preceding 
Aurignacian  level. 

Solutrean  stations  hi  addition  to  those  already  men- 
tioned are  not  uncommon  in  Southern  France,  as  e.g. 
Laugerie  Haute  (Dordogne),  and  Lacave  (Lot),  but  rarer 
in  Spain  and  Germany.  In  Great  Britain  Solutrean 
remains  have  been  described  from  the  Paviland  Cave,  as 
also  from  Kent's  Cavern,  Torquay,  which  has  been  ex- 
plored from  1825  onwards,  and  from  the  Cresswell  Crags. 
In  Hungary  and  Czecho-Slavakia  there  are  several 
Solutrean  sites,  notably  the  cave  of  Szeleta,  near  Miskolcz. 

(iii)  Magdalenian 

The  Magdalenian  culture  takes  its  name  from  the 
remains  found  at  the  prehistoric  site  of  La  Madeleine  in 
the  ravine  of  the  Lower  Ve"zere.  In  sheer  human  interest 
no  phase  of  Palaeolithic  history  is  more  romantically 
rich.  The  actual  fossil  remains  are  still  few — not  more 
numerous  than  those  of  the  Solutrean — and  often  incom- 
pletely described.  A  skeleton  from  Laugerie  Basse  re- 
minded the  investigators  of  Cromagnon  man  :  it  had  even 
been  decorated  with  shells.  This  reminiscence  of  the 
Aurignacian  in  the  Magdalenian  is  not  without  signifi- 
cance. The  skeleton  from  Chancelade  (Dordogne)  forced 
the  same  recollection,  even  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it 
was  that  of  a  dwarf.  He  had  been  buried  in  a  very  flexed 
position.  Another  skeleton  discovered  in  1895  in  the 
Grotte  des  Hoteaux  near  Roussillon  (Ain)  at  a  depth  of 


•zC i»S»j 

nvj/\[  fo  <(}inbi)ny  s.3i^p{)  UKXIJ  ';3upjoi\[  ap 
3j3uis  pun  aiqnop  'oi  pun  6  i  \oo)  paiuiod  'g  f  apBjq  luty  oqsuapB 
jadnjos  pauiqtuoo  '9  i  J3.\ujS  }uiy  jq3iuj;s  'S  :  6-S  'tt 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  133 

2-35  metres  gave  indubitable  proof,  through  the  mistaken 
rearrangement  of  the  bones,  of  the  practice  of  '  double 
sepulture,'  i.e.  of  a  preliminary  temporary  interment  till 
the  flesh  had  disappeared,  followed  by  a  permanent  burial 
of  the  skeleton.  In  this  case  the  bones  rested  on  an 
ochreous  bed,  and  beside  them  had  been  placed  flint 
implements  of  Magdalenian  workmanship,  various  orna- 
ments, and  a  baton  de  commandement.  The  cave  further 
contained  the  remains  of  reindeer  (Rangifer  tarandus), 
Alpine  ibex  (Capra  ibex),  the  red  deer  (Cervus  elaphus), 
the  moose  (Alces  latifrons),  the  brown  bear  (Ursus  arctos), 
the  marmot  (Arctomys  marmotta),  the  wild  boar  (Sus 
scrofaferus),  the  beaver  (Castor  fiber),  the  common  hare 
(Lepus  timidus),  the  cave  hyaena  (C.  spelaea),  the  badger 
(Meles  taxus),  etc.  Several  other  skeletons  give  the  same 
general  indications. 

In  flintwork  the  Magdalenians  do  not  compare  with 
their  Solutrean  predecessors,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
their  genius  lay  in  the  development  of  implements  in 
bone  and  horn  and  ivory.  The  average  Magdalenian 
flint  implement  is  a  flake,  sometimes  of  a  peculiarly  long 
ribbon-like  character,  detached  from  the  nodule  with  a 
single  blow,  and  thereafter  adapted  as  a  knife  or  scraper, 
or  with  an  added  fine  point  as  a  borer,  with  a  minimum  of 
secondary  chipping.  In  form  they  largely  resemble 
those  of  immediately  preceding  stages,  and  the  reappear- 
ance of  the  keel-shaped  (carinate)  scraper  and  other 
characteristic  Aurignacian  forms  is  not  without  signifi- 
cance from  an  ethnological  point  of  view.  The  distinc- 
tively new  is  to  be  found  in  the  forms  in  bone  and  ivory 
and  horn.  Heads  of  assegais  in  bone  and  ivory,  barbed 
harpoon-like  forms  in  reindeer  horn  whose  evolution  can 
be  traced  through  different  stages,  the  problematical 
baton  de  commandement,  usually  of  reindeer  horn,  often 
elaborately  ornamented,  which  are  as  likely  to  have  been 
(assegai)  shaft  straighteners  as  anything  else,  and  '  pro- 
pulsors '  to  aid  in  the  throwing  of  javelins,  are  amongst 
some  of  the  new  types  of  implement.  Needles  with  pierced 


134     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

eyes,  made  out  of  polished  splinters  of  bone,  seem  to  have 
been  in  general  use  for  sewing  hides  together  as  garments 
and  vessels  to  hold  liquid,  the  holes  being  first  drilled  with 
a  flint  piercer.  There  seems  to  be  some  evidence  of  the 
fashioning  of  the  vaults  of  human  skulls  (almost  certainly 
those  of  enemies)  for  use  as  drinking  cups.  Macalister 
states  that  the  only  object  of  Magdalenian  woodcraft  that 
has  come  down  to  us — probably  owing  to  the  perishable 
nature  of  the  medium — is  the  figure  of  a  beetle  found  in 
one  of  the  caves  at  Arcy-sur-Cure  (Yonne).1  It  had  a 
hole  drilled  through  it,  and  was  probably  worn  as  an 
amulet.  There  is  no  evidence  of  the  knowledge  of  pottery 
even  in  the  Magdalenian  deposits. 

In  Great  Britain,  Magdalenian  implements  have  been 
found  notably  in  Kent's  Cavern,  Torquay,  and  Gough's 
Cavern  (Cheddar,  Somerset).  Several  of  the  classical 
Magdalenian  sites  are  found  in  Southern  France  in  addi- 
tion to  the  type  station,  as  e.g.  Laugerie  Basse  and  Le 
Mas  d'Azil.  They  are  also  common  in  Spain  and  Germany 
(der  Sirgenstein,  Propstfels,  near  Beuron  in  Hohenzollern, 
etc.).  In  Switzerland  there  are  two  sites  of  superlative 
importance  from  the  Magdalenian  point  of  view,  viz.  the 
Kesslerloch  (Schaffhausen)  which  yielded  thousands  of 
flint  and  other  implements,  a  very  wide  series  of  mam- 
malian bones,  and  some  of  the  best  examples  of  Magdalenian 
sculpture  and  engraving,  e.g.  the  famous  browsing  rein- 
deer. Of  only  less  importance  is  the  neighbouring  open- 
air  rock-station  of  Schweizersbild,  which  shows  signs  of 
habitation,  not  however  continuous,  from  Aurignacian 
times  to  the  Bronze  Age.  The  Magdalenian  implements 
numbered  over  fourteen  thousand.  Some  of  the  pierced 
shells,  evidently  articles  of  personal  adornment,  were  fossil 
marine  forms  from  strata  which  are  only  known  at  a 
considerable  distance  from  the  station  in  question,2  and 
whose  presence  there  is  accordingly  held  to  indicate  con- 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  401. 

1  The  reference  is  to  the  Tertiary  marine  deposits  at  Mayence.  Cf. 
Macalister,  op.  cit.  p.  422. 


136     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

siderable  movement  of,  or  amongst,  the  Magdalenian 
people,  and  probable  exchange  of  commodities.  In 
Czecho-Slovakia  and  Yugo-Slavia  there  are  several  im- 
portant Magdalenian  stations,  which  also  have  yielded 
examples  of  Magdalenian  art.  The  same  holds  true  of 
the  remarkable  series  of  caves  near  Ojk6w  in  Poland,  and 
of  a  small  group  of  stations  in  South  Russia.  Of  these 
the  most  interesting  were  the  discoveries  made  at  a  depth 
of  twenty  metres  during  excavations  over  a  long  period 
previous  to  1903  along  the  right  bank  of  the  Dnieper  in 
making  the  street  of  Saint  Kyril  in  Kiev.  Several  hearths 
were  found  of  Magdalenian  date,  and  around  them  split 
bones  of  mammoth,  a  horn  of  the  woolly  rhinoceros 
(R.  tich.},  bones  of  cave  lion  and  cave  bear,  flint  imple- 
ments, and  an  engraved  fragment  of  a  mammoth  tusk. 

Magdalenian  art  reaches  so  high  a  level  in  some  of  its 
phases  that  only  an  artist  or  art  critic  can  do  real  justice 
to  it.  A  few  outstanding  features  may,  however,  be 
noted.  So  far  as  sculpture  in  the  round  is  concerned, 
there  is  no  example  of  the  human  figure.  The  subjects 
are  animals — horses,  oxen,  reindeer — or  parts  of  animals, 
and  the  figures  are  sometimes  done  with  distinctive  skill. 
The  same  holds  of  their  sculpture  in  relief  ;  the  subjects 
so  far  as  known,  as  e.g.  in  the  rock-shelter  at  Cap-Blanc 
near  Laussel,  are  animals.  In  the  case  of  their  engrav- 
ings, whether  on  walls  or  on  small  objects,  the  great 
majority  of  the  subjects  are  again  animals — reindeer, 
horses,  bisons,  mammoths.  Here  the  drawing  is  peculiarly 
true  to  nature — so  true  that  zoological  varieties  have 
been  founded  upon  it.  The  bold  strong  lines  of  the 
Aurignacian  engraver  have  been  replaced  by  finer  and 
more  delicate  strokes.  So  the  browsing  reindeer  from 
the  Kesslerloch,  done  with  fine  feeling  on  a  piece  of  rein- 
deer horn,  is  often  cited  as  the  high-water  mark  of  Palaeo- 
lithic engraving.  Yet  there  is  very  striking  failure  when 
it  comes  to  portraying  the  human  figure,  which  in  any 
case  is  very  rarely  done.  Many  of  the  attempts  are  so 
bizarre  as  to  call  for  the  explanation,  based  on  analogies 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  137 

from  modern  savage  ceremonies,  that  they  represent 
human  figures  engaged  in  some  kind  of  religious  dance 
and  wearing  animal  masks.  It  may  have  been  due  to  a 
low  sense  of  human  individuality  and  so  of  interest  in 
man  qua  man.  More  probably  it  was  the  result  of  a  direct 
engrossment  with  those  animals  that  meant  most  to  him 
for  food  and  clothing,  or  as  enemies — an  interest  illu- 
mined by  magic.  Other  objects  such  as  plant  life,  or 
conventional  designs,  are  also  sometimes  figured. 

Of  clay  modelling  there  is  one  very  remarkable  ex- 
ample, more  interesting  in  its  connotations  even  than  in 
the  actual  handiwork.  For  in  the  inmost  recess  of  a  cave 
system  (Tuc  d'Audoubert)  in  the  department  of  Ariege, 
to  reach  which  involved  not  merely  the  passage  of  several 
galleries  and  halls,  but  more  than  one  perilous  ascent — 
in  particular  a  climb  of  twelve  metres  up  a  '  chimney ' 
in  the  corner  of  one  of  these  halls  to  attain  the  final  level — 
Count  Begouen  found  two  statuettes  of  bisons  modelled 
in  clay,  and  set  up  against  a  block  of  rock  that  had  once 
fallen  from  the  roof  of  the  chamber.  On  the  cave  floor 
still  remained  the  impress  of  the  heels  of  those  who  had 
evidently  participated  in  some  sort  of  ceremonial  dance 
in  which  apparently  only  the  heels  were  permitted  to 
touch  the  ground.  Some  of  the  passages  and  the  top  of 
the  '  chimney  '  were  adorned  with  engravings  of  bisons. 
Evidently  the  inner  recess  was  the  secret  shrine  of  some 
cult,  supposed  to  be  of  Aurignacian  age. 

Magdalenian  painting  is  a  real  advance  on  the  corre- 
sponding Aurignacian  art,  in  that  the  whole  surface  of  the 
figure  was  filled  in  with  paint,  usually  red  ochre  or  the 
black  of  manganese  oxide.  In  the  last  developments  of 
this  phase  these  and  other  colours  and  mixtures  of  them 
were  made  use  of  in  the  same  representation,  and  even 
natural  irregularities  in  the  rocky  slab  were  sometimes 
worked  into  the  figures  with  a  view  to  heightening  effects. 
As  in  the  other  methods  of  delineation,  the  majority  of 
subjects  are  animals.  Man  is  seldom  represented,  and 
there  is  nothing  of  Magdalenian  date  comparable  to  the 


138     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Gargas  Cave  hand  stencillings.  Of  the  animals  or  parts 
of  animals  depicted  on  the  walls  of  caves  there  is  an  im- 
mense variety  of  species,  all  of  them  being  forms  that 
come  into  some  kind  of  a  relationship  to  man,  most  of 
them  forms  that  are  of  service  to  him.  Thus  bison, 
horses,  reindeer,  cows,  goats,  deer,  the  chamois,  rhinoceros 
and  mammoth  are  common  subjects,  the  cave  lion  and 
cave  bear  much  less  so.  In  some  cases,  as  in  the  famous 
caverns  of  Font-de-Gaume  at  Les  Eyzies  (Dordogne)  and 
Altamira  in  N.-E.  Spain,  there  are  great  series  of  repre- 
sentations of  the  same  animal,  e.g.  the  bison,  or  the 
mammoth.  The  realism  is  only  equalled  by  the  delicacy 
of  execution.  Action,  however,  is  seldom  represented  ; 
there  is  no  story,  and  rarely  is  any  interest  or  contact 
with  human  life  depicted.  It  is  apparently  in  the  animal 
itself  that  the  interest  lies.  Now,  this  concentration  on 
one  particular  form  cannot  be  without  meaning,  and 
attempts  have  been  made  to  explain  it,  as  will  appear  in 
the  sequel.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  cave  of  Marsoulas 
(Haute-Garonne) ,  figures  of  the  dominant  form — in  this 
case  the  bison — are  drawn  in  very  awkward  places,  as  on 
the  roof  of  a  narrow  passage.  Any  attempt,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  picture  a  human  face  is  always  on  a  much  lower 
plane  of  artistic  excellence,  while  certain  patterns  and 
devices  afford  scope  for  ingenuity  in  archaeological  guess- 
work, but  contribute  little  in  the  present  state  of  know- 
ledge to  the  understanding  of  Late  Palaeolithic  life.  In 
one  other  group  of  cave  and  rock-paintings,  viz.  those 
found  in  Eastern  and  Southern  Spain  as  at  Cogul  and 
Alpera,  we  find  the  work  of  another  school,  or  maybe 
population,  probably  contemporary  with  the  more  typical 
Magdalenian  art — for  as  Macalister  points  out,1  the  later 
Azilian  culture  seems  to  inherit  from  both — yet  providing 
quite  a  different  atmosphere.  The  interest  is  now  in  life, 
in  action,  in  the  representation  of  a  scene,  so  much  so  that 
the  portrayal  of  the  actors  when  they  are  human — and 
both  men  and  women  are  freely  depicted — takes  a 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  498. 


FIG.  21. — Examples  of  Magdalenian  Art  from  the  Cave  of  .Font-de-Gaume. 
Alx>ve,  reindeer  partly  painted,  partly  incised  ;  below,  bison  painted  in 
ochre.  (After  Capitan  and  Breuil,  from  R.  Munro's  Palaeolithic  Man.) 

Page  ,38. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  139 

stylistic  form  of  little  sprites — a  sort  of  reduction  of 
humanity  to  its  lowest  common  measure — while  that  of 
animals  is  sometimes  in  similar  terms,  but  more  often 
with  admirable  miniature  truth  to  life.  The  chase — in 
which  bows  and  arrows  now  play  a  great  part — warfare, 
and  the  ritualistic  dance  are  amongst  the  subjects  por- 
trayed. A  modicum  of  information  may  even  be  gleaned 
as  to  dress,  but  much  hi  connection  not  merely  with  the 
actual  representations  but  with  their  history  still  remains 
obscure. 

At  the  same  time  the  general  impression  left  by  Magda- 
lenian  art,  as  we  have  it,  is  that  it  points  beyond  itself. 
It  is  something  more  than  mere  '  Art  for  Art's  sake,'  for, 
whatever  else  he  was,  the  struggle  for  existence  made 
primitive  man  an  intensely  practical  being.  This  does 
not  mean  that  the  engraver  of,  say,  the  Kesslerloch  brows- 
ing reindeer  felt  no  pride  in  his  performance  comparable 
to  the  admiration  expended  upon  it  by  the  professionally 
competent  of  later  generations.  But  it  does  mean  that 
he  did  not  produce  this  chef-d' auvre  simply  because  he 
wanted  to  make  a  representation  of  a  reindeer.  Late 
Palaeolithic  man  was  pre-eminently  a  hunter,  pitiably 
dependent  upon  his  quarry  for  food  and  clothing,  and 
even  on  its  bones  and  fats  for  making  certain  implements 
and  compounding  colouring  materials.  But  at  any 
moment  the  herds  of  more  timid  forms  might  leave  his 
district  and  the  depredations  of  aggressive  carnivores 
become  a  real  threat.  Without  stores  and  no  calculable 
routine  of  agricultural  production,  famine  must  often 
have  beleaguered  his  encampments.  Palaeolithic  man 
deemed  these  animals  more  powerful  than  himself,  and 
possessed  of  mysterious  qualities.  He  was  practically 
at  their  mercy  at  this  stage,  so  great  was  his  dependence 
on  them.  This  preoccupation  with  them  expressed  itself 
in  representations  of  them.  But  to  his  primitive  mind 
the  representations  were  as  the  very  animals  themselves,1 
and  to  that  extent  in  some  measure  within  his  power. 

1  Mainage,  op.  cit.  pp.  329,  337. 


140     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Accordingly,  when  we  consider  all  the  facts  about  the 
portraiture  of  bisons,  mammoths,  reindeer,  and  any  other 
form  in  connection  with  which  there  is  thus  evidence  of 
a  concentration  of  interest,  noting  also  the  apparent 
absence  of  interest  in  sun,  moon,  and  stars  or  the  world  of 
plant  life,  we  begin  to  suspect  that  we  are  in  the  region 
of  that  early  accompaniment  of  religion,  viz.  magic. 
When  we  find  bisons  depicted  with  javelins  in  their  sides 
(Marsoulas  grotto),  or  bleeding  from  a  mortal  wound 
(Niaux  cavern),  it  is  difficult  to  resist  the  impression  that 
the  wish  or  desire  is  father  to  the  painting,  and  that  it  is 
hoped  that  the  representations  may  be  fulfilled  in  actual 
life.  The  picture  in  short  is  a  portrayed  prayer,  a  piece 
of  sympathetic  magic.  And  the  prayer  might  be  repeated 
in  one  form  or  another,  for  over  a  previous  representation, 
which  seems  thereby  to  be  considered  as  finished  and  done 
with,  having  served  its  purpose  of  promoting  some  cap- 
ture and  increase  of  supplies,  is  sometimes  superposed 
a  second  picture,  which  mayhap  inherited,  so  to  speak, 
the  magical  power  that  had  been  in  the  previous  repre- 
sentation. '  The  primitive  hunter  wishes  to  make  sure 
of  his  subsistence.  He  employs  every  kind  of  means. 
Because  he  is  ingenious  he  improves  his  weapons  and 
uses  them.  Because  he  is  religious,  and  thinks  of  the 
animals  as  superior  beings,  he  prays,  he  fasts,  he  mortifies 
his  members.  And  because  magic  seems  to  him  to  lead 
assuredly  to  results,  he  practises  magic.  With  harmonis- 
ing these  different  tendencies,  he  has  no  concern/  l 

In  this  way,  perhaps,  we  can  understand  why  such 
representations  are  commonly  found  in  the  dark  inner- 
most recesses  of  the  caverns,  reached  often  only  with  con- 
siderable difficulty,  where  apparently  magical  rites  were 
performed,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Cult  of  the  Bison  at 
Tuc  d'Audoubert.  It  is  apparent  that  pictographs  made 
upon  roofs  of  passages,  under  what  must  have  been  in 
some  instances  very  trying  physical  conditions,  and 
where  they  could  never  be  seen  by  natural  light,  can 

1  Mainage,  op.  cit.  p.  348. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  141 

hardly  have  been  for  purposes  of  ornamentation  simply. 
So  Marett,  in  his  description  of  '  a  prehistoric  sanctuary,' 
speaks  of  the  Niaux  cavern  (Ariege)  as  '  a  mile-long  sub- 
terranean cathedral  with  pillars,  side-chapels,  and  con- 
fessionals all  complete,'  where  of  the  seventy  or  eighty 
animal  subjects  '  nearly  all  have  what  look  like  weapons — 
spears  of  various  shapes  or  a  throwing  club — attached  to 


P'lG.  22. — Large  bison  from  the  Niaux  Cavern,  with  four  arrow  marks. 
(After  Capitan  and  Breuil,  from  R.  Munro's  Palaeolithic  Man.) 

their  sides  or  overlying  the  region  of  the  heart.  .  .  .  And 
perhaps  the  best  proof  of  all  is  that  the  spirit  of  awe  and 
mystery  still  broods  in  these  dark  galleries  within  a 
mountain,  that  are,  to  a  modern  mind,  symbolic  of  nothing 
so  much  as  of  the  dim  subliminal  recesses  of  the  human 
soul.' 1  In  the  same  sort  of  atmosphere  the  stencilled 
representations  of  hands,  as  on  the  walls  of  the  Gargas 
Cave,  have  sometimes  been  explained  in  accordance  with 

1  R.  R.  Marett,  The  Threshold  of  Religion,  pp.  206,  213,  220. 


142     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

a  widespread  modern  custom,  as  the  provision  of  an 
amulet  against  the  evil  eye,  or  the  registration  of  a  vow 
in  direct  physical  contact  with  some  holy  place.1 

When  dealing  with  the  religion  of  Late  Palaeolithic 
man  we  are  on  somewhat  surer  ground.  It  has  been  sug- 
gested with  very  great  probability,  on  the  basis  of  analog- 
ous figures  in  Semitic  art,  that  some  of  the  Aurignacian 
sculptured  figures  to  which  reference  has  been  made  may 
be  representations  of  a  goddess  of  fertility  and  birth,  and 
there  is  clear  evidence  of  ritualistic  and  masked  dancing,2 
in  connection  with  cults.  The  dance,  too,  is  an  expression 
of  desire ;  in  a  hunting  dance  the  various  actions  of  the 
chase  are  rehearsed,  and  power  is  gamed  to  slay  the 
quarry.  To  what  extent  an  associated  form  of  fetichism 
prevailed  alongside  of  more  ultimate  beliefs  we  have  no 
means  at  present  of  judging.  So  far  as  belief  in  the  sur- 
vival of  the  human  spirit  is  concerned  it  is  clear,  in  the 
case  of  most  of  the  Aurignacian  interments,  that  we  are 
dealing  with  intentional  burial.  As  before,  ornaments  and 
pendants  of  value  are  interred  with  the  remains — orna- 
ments sometimes  of  perforated  teeth  of  wild  animals 
which  may  have  been  worn  in  life  as  amulets — as  well  as 
weapons  and  implements  that  had  been  of  service  : 
apparently  they  would  be  needed  in  the  hereafter.  There 
is  often  evidence  of  care  taken  for  the  protection  of  the 
body  by  placing  slabs  of  stone  around  and  over  it.  Of 
special  interest  is  the  custom  of  staining  or  painting  the 
bones  with  red  ochre,  after  the  first  temporary  burial. 
Sometimes  the  same  end  was  sought  by  covering  the 
bottom  of  the  grave  with  this  colouring  substance  so  that 
the  actual  interment  was,  so  to  speak,  in  a  bed  of  ochre. 
There  was  purpose  and  belief  in  it  all.  Red  is  the  colour 
of  the  warm  living  flesh  and  blood,  and  the  bones,  so 
painted,  would  preserve  something  of  their  vital  relation- 

1  A  totemistic  explanation  of  these  Palaeolithic  cave  paintings, 
although  not  without  some  possible  support,  seems  to  be  ruled  out  by 
the  wide  range  of  animal  life  depicted  in  most  caves  and  by  the  wide 
area  over  which  several  of  them  are  found. 

a  Cf.  Mainage,  op.  cit.  pp.  313-314. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  143 

ship  and  function.  In  his  own  way  the  Aurignacian  could 
have  said,  '  I  believe  in  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  and 
the  life  everlasting.' 

There  still  remains  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  the 
Aurignacians.  But  like  all  problems  in  origins  it  is  far 
from  clear.  We  have  seen  some  reason  to  believe  in 
an  evolution  through  Chellean  and  Acheulean  to  Mous- 
terian  man,  the  earliest  representatives  having  probably 
entered  Europe  as  emigrants  from  the  Iranian  plateau 
in  Central  Asia.  Whether  this  long  continued  process 
of  diffusion  was  through  Asia  Minor  by  way  of  the 
land  bridge  at  the  Dardanelles,  or  by  the  other  great 
route  that  swept  northwards  and  round  the  Caspian  and 
Black  Seas,  we  do  not  know.  But  assuredly  just  as  at 
an  earlier  stage  the  chimpanzee  and  gorilla  had  found 
their  way  from  Central  Asia  into  Africa  through  Arabia 
and  the  Egypt  of  to-day,  so  at  a  later  period  did  repre- 
sentatives of  the  original  human  stock  follow  the  same 
route,  and  an  evolution  took  place  there  in  the  Negrito 
line,  modern  representatives  of  whom  are  seen  in  the 
Pygmies  and  Bushmen,  and  in  the  later  Negroid  waves 
which  often  submerged  the  Negritoes.  Now  we  have 
observed  that  the  Aurignacian  culture  is  particularly 
well  represented  in  Spain,  Southern  France  and  Italy  : 
these  people  evidently  entered  Europe  from  the  south, 
not  necessarily  on  one  occasion,  and  with  them  were 
individuals  showing  somewhat  markedly  negroid  char- 
acteristics.1 There  is  also  a  remarkable  correspondence 
between  Aurignacian  art  and  that  of  the  Bushmen,  and 
those  who  consider  that  the  Gargas  hands  are  mutilated 
find  another  parallel  in  the  Bushman  custom  of  finger 
lopping.  Physically,  however,  there  can  be  no  direct 
relationship,  even  if  it  is  probable  that  the  Bushman 
migrated  southward  from  Central  Africa.  But  we  may 
with  a  certain  amount  of  reason  suppose  the  Aurignacians 
to  have  been  an  offshoot  from  that  original  human 
wave  that  entered  Africa,  and  which  for  a  time  had  its 
»  Cf.  p.  123. 


144     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

centre  somewhere  in  the  north-west  region  of  that  con- 
tinent. Under  pressure  from  the  succeeding  waves  that 
ultimately  developed  into  the  more  Negroid  lines,  or 
from  other  causes,  one  section  of  them  may  have  taken 
a  northward  direction  and  crossed  into  Europe  by  the 
land  bridges  at  Gibraltar  and  Sicily.1  Macalister,  who 
thinks  of  '  the  cradle  of  the  Aurignacian  people,  as  such,' 
being  '  somewhere  between  the  head  waters  of  the  Nile 
and  of  the  Congo,2  without  further  inquiry  into  their 
origin,  suggests  two  other  directions  of  dispersal.  One 
section  '  passed  down  the  Nile,  to  found  the  civilisation  of 
Egypt ' ;  the  other  '  traversed  the  mountain-passes  of 
Abyssinia  and  crossed  the  Strait  of  Bab-el-Mandeb,  to  be- 
come the  parent  of  the  various  Semitic  civilisations  which 
radiated  from  Arabia.'  A  retracing  of  the  ancestral  route 
such  as  is  thus  implied  does  not  appear  altogether  probable. 
The  Aurignacians,  then,  entered  Europe  from  Africa, 
bringing  with  them  a  distinctive  and  in  many  ways  a 
superior  civilisation  to  the  Mousterian  which  they  found. 
This  tall,  well-developed,  big-brained  Cromagnon  race 
gradually  replaced  the  Mousterians,  who  either  died  out 
or  were  exterminated.  The  next  stages  are  more  difficult 
to  follow.  There  appears,  however,  in  the  eastern  part 
of  Central  Europe  the  Solutrean  race,  who  seem  to  hold 
a  position,  both  physically  and  culturally,  midway  be- 
tween the  Mousterian  and  Aurignacian.  Their  flint 
chipping  is  the  perfection  of  Palaeolithic  craftsmanship, 
their  most  characteristic  handiwork  (the  '  laurel-leaf ' 
javelin  head)  being  recognised  at  the  same  time  as  a 
development  of  the  best  Acheulean  coups-de-poing,  while 
on  the  other  hand  they  showed  no  advance  or  particular 
skill  in  art  such  as  the  Aurignacians  had.  It  has  been 
suggested  3  that  this  balance  of  qualities  was  the  result 

1  There  may  therefore  be  something  more  than  mere  resemblance 
between  the  crimped  braiding  of  the  hair  of  Aurignacian  women  and 
the  characteristic  style  of  ancient  Egyptian  perruque. 

2  Op.  cit.  p.  577. 

3  E.g.  by  Macalister,  op.  cit.  p.  385.     The  same  general  position  is 
adopted  by  Prof.  Mainage,  Les  Religions  de  la  Prthistoire,  pp.  412-416. 


PALAEOLITHIC  MAN  145 

of  an  actual  blend  between  Aurignacians  and  Mousterians 
in  this  region  in  the  later  period  of  the  Aurignacian 
occupation,  and  that  the  resultant  Solutrean  race  moved 
westwards,  driving  out  the  Aurignacians  before  them. 
The  latter  retreated  south  into  Italy,  where  there  are  no 
Solutrean  remains,  and  later  when  the  Solutrean  episode 
had  passed,  returned  as  a  modified  people — the  Magdal- 
enians — with  developments  in  culture  and  artistry  that 
yet  manifestly  preserve  their  continuity  with  the  past. 
Events  such  as  these,  however,  were  not  the  matter  of  a 
day,  and  not  merely  in  connection  with  the  changes  in  the 
climate,  but  the  earlier  less  stimulating  stay  in  the  south, 
may  have  been  correlated  the  physical  differences,  in  no 
way  profound,  which  distinguished  the  Magdalenian  from 
the  Aurignacian  race.  But  once  again  with  the  oncoming 
of  a  glacial  episode,  a  race  deteriorated  so  as  in  the  end 
to  vanish  completely. 

A  certain  amount  of  probability  is  further  given  to  this 
hypothesis  by  the  existence  of  a  so-called  Capsian  culture 
in  North  Africa,  a  region  further  that  shows  no  trace  of 
either  Solutrean  or  Magdalenian  deposits.  It  is  con- 
ceivable that  the  Capsian  may  have  been  a  sort  of  e"tape 
colony  left  by  the  Aurignacian  wave  in  its  advance  into 
Europe.  Thus  the  Lower  Capsian  shows  the  character- 
istic implements  of  the  Lower  Aurignacian,  as  e.g.  the 
Chatelperron  knife.  The  Upper  Capsian  shows  the  bone 
needles  and  scrapers  of  the  Upper  Aurignacian,  but  it  is 
noticeable  that  the  Aurignacian  flints  of  the  Lower 
Capsian  '  degenerate  into  flints  of  geometrical  form,' * 
which  dwindle  further  and  directly  into  the  Tardenoisian 
'  pygmy  '  flints  2  of  the  Mesolithic — there  is  no  Solutrean 
or  Magdalenian  stage.  Now  the  remarkable  fact  is  that 
these  stages  are  not  found  in  Spain,  with  the  exception 
of  a  limited  region  in  the  north.  A  Capsian  culture 
follows  directly  upon  the  Aurignacian  in  Spain,  and  is 
limited  to  that  country  in  Europe,  and  it  is  undoubtedly 
with  this  Capsian  culture  that  the  peculiar  parietal  art 

1  Macalister,  op.  cit.  p.  538.  *  Cf.  p.  150. 

K 


146     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

of  Cogul  and  Alpera  must  be  associated.  The  Capsians 
also  probably  introduced  the  bow  into  Europe,  and  while 
they  seem  to  have  successfully  held  the  greater  part  of 
the  Iberian  Peninsula  against  the  Magdalenians,  yet  it 
is  the  cultures  of  these  two  populations  that  unite  in 
the  Mesolithic  Azilian. 

Already,  then,  at  the  close  of  the  Palaeolithic  we  are 
aware  of  considerable  variation  in  human  stocks,  of  great 
migrations,  and  of  barter  on  a  scale  that  must  have 
meant  considerable  coming  and  going  in  the  inhabited 
areas.  The  problem  of  origins  meets  us  continually, 
sometimes  with  still  baffling  results,  but  we  feel  ourselves 
already  in  the  midst  of  race  movements  that  were  almost 
world-wide.  An  attractive  train  of  speculation  has  sought 
for  reasons  to  link  the  various  races  of  Palaeolithic  man 
with  modern  peoples.1  The  resemblances  between  the 
Mousterian  and  the  native  Australian  are  perhaps  best 
explained  by  the  fact  that  just  as  the  orang  in  Borneo 
and  Sumatra  and  the  gibbon  in  the  Malay  Archipelago 
are  descendants  of  the  simian  ancestral  forms  that  spread 
to  the  south-east  from  the  original  Central  Asiatic  home, 
so  the  Australian  aboriginals  are  also  descendants  of  that 
first  wave  of  human  life,  part  of  which  dispersed  west- 
ward into  Europe  and  part  of  which  went  to  the  south- 
west. The  European  Aurignacians  are  believed  by  some 
to  be  represented  in  the  Basque  people  of  Perigueux. 
This  may  be  true  in  the  sense  that  these  people  may  have 
a  more  direct  connection  with  some  isolated  Aurignacian 
community  than  the  average  post-Magdalenian  inhabitant 
of  Europe.  The  more  natural  supposition,  perhaps,  is  that 
one  which  links  the  Aurignacian  after-history  with  the 
Magdalenians,  and  sees  in  the  latter  a  people  who  in 
the  end  succumbed  to,  or  were  absorbed  by,  the  ever 
incoming  peoples  from  the  east,  rather  than  as  pushed 
by  the  latter  slowly  north  with  their  reindeer  to  be  re- 
discovered in  the  Esquimaux  of  to-day. 

1  Cf.  especially  Prof.  W.  J.  Sollas,  Ancient  Hunters  and  their  Modern 
Representatives. 


CHAPTER  VII 

MESOLITHIC  AND   NEOLITHIC  MAN 

As  recently  as  the  year  1887,  for  those  who  constituted 
the  interested  audience,  the  curtain  fell  at  the  close  of  the 
first,  the  Palaeolithic  Act,  in  the  Drama  of  Human 
History,  and  when  it  rose  again  upon  Neolithic  scenes,  it 
was  in  the  presence  of  an  entirely  new  cast,  with  new 
habits  and  new  manners  of  living,  moving  amidst  a  fauna 
and  flora  and  under  climatic  conditions  that  were  much 
more  familiar  than  those  of  Pleistocene  days — in  fact 
essentially  modern.  The  Arctic  mammalia  and  their 
southern  contemporaries  had  been  removed  by  the  scene 
shifters,  and  the  last  Palaeolithic  man  had  for  ever  left 
the  stage.  The  latter,  as  he  was  last  seen  in  the  form  of 
the  dolichocephalic,  artistic  reindeer-hunter  of  Aquitaine, 
was  a  very  distinctive  human  being — for  all  time  Magda- 
lenian  art  will  be,  of  its  kind,  at  once  an  acme  and  a  cri- 
terion— but  his  successor  was  no  less  remarkable  in  his 
own  way.  Brachycephalic  or  dolichocephalic,  Neolithic 
man  was  a  shepherd  and  a  tiller  of  the  soil,  who  polished 
his  stone  implements  and  had  begun  to  live  in  settled 
communities.  He  erected  places  of  sojourn  for  the  living 
and  for  the  dead — there  are  no  Palaeolithic  structures. 
He  could  make  hand-moulded  pottery,  and  he  had  some 
knowledge  of  the  art  of  weaving. 

Now  this  unquestionable  break  disturbed  the  sense  of 
continuity  in  the  audience,  who  felt  certain  that  there 
ought  to  be  an  Entr'acte,  and  that  could  they  but  get 
behind  the  curtain,  i.e.  find  the  right  but  till  then  undis- 
covered cave,  gravel  deposit  or  valley  drift,  they  would 
see  the  actual  transformation  scene.  The  undoubted  gap 

147 


148     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

that  occurred  was,  as  Professor  Geikie  used  to  remark, 
but  a  gap  in  our  knowledge — much  as  the  recorded  dis- 
tributions of  insects  sometimes  correspond  more  to  the 
distribution  of  the  entomologist  than  of  the  insects.  In 
this  faith  they  were  to  be  justified  :  transition  deposits 
containing  human  relics  were  eventually  found.  In  1887 
Edouard  Piette  began  the  systematic  investigation  of  a 
cavern-like  subterranean  river-channel  near  the  village 
of  Le  Mas  d'Azil  on  a  spur  of  the  Pyrenees  (Ariege),  and 
found  a  series  of  strata  embedding  remains  of  cultures 
that  marked  the  transition  from  Palaeolithic  to  Neolithic 
times.  The  lowest  of  them  was  23  feet  above  the  present 
bed  of  the  river  (Arise) .  The  actual  intermediate  culture 
is  now  known  as  Azilian,  and  it  lay,  in  this  case  in  two 
strata  (which  can  be  further  differentiated)  about  20 
inches  in  thickness,  over  strata  of  a  total  depth  of  17  feet, 
including  two  long  periods  of  Magdalenian  occupation. 
Above  it  were  three  deposits  of  a  total  thickness  of  6£ 
feet  which  contained  remains  of  cultures  from  the  Neo- 
lithic to  Roman  days.  Two  thick  alluvial  beds  of  yellow 
silt  lying  immediately  above  each  of  the  Magdalenian 
deposits  testified  to  long  periods  of  flood  or  submergence 
during  which  the  gallery  must  have  been  uninhabitable. 
Remains  of  the  reindeer  characterised  the  Magdalenian 
layers — in  a  vanishing  degree  in  the  upper  one — but  were 
absent  from  the  Azilian,  where  its  place  was  taken  by 
the  stag. 

Azilian  life  as  revealed  by  the  remains  in  the  type 
station  was  genuinely  Mesolithic — intermediate  between 
Palaeolithic  and  Neolithic  conditions.  The  fauna  was  in 
facies  definitely  later  than  the  true  Palaeolithic,  while 
there  were  indications  of  a  damper  climate  than  now  exists 
in  that  region.  The  numerous  remains  of  plants  and 
fruit  stones  suggested  that  some  steps  in  agriculture  may 
have  been  taken.  There  was,  however,  no  pottery,  and 
nothing  to  indicate  the  domestication  of  any  animal. 
The  Azilians  worked  their  flints  in  very  similar  fashion  to 
the  Magdalenians,  but  had  not  discovered  the  art  of 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN        149 

polishing  stone.  They  made  the  same  sorts  of  carved 
and  barbed  harpoons — characteristically  flat  in  section — 
and  arrow  heads,  but  from  the  bone  and  antlers  of  the 
stag,  and  with  less  skill.  The  dainty  Magdalenian  needles 
are  no  longer  in  evidence :  in  fact,  in  all  their  bone  in- 
dustry there  was  deterioration  in  design  and  craftsmanship. 
A  new  element  in  culture  is  the  Azilian  adornment  of 
rounded  pebbles  with  peculiar  hieroglyphics  in  red  ochre. 
These  have  been  carefully  studied,  and  compared  with 
the  marks  painted  on  the  walls  in  the  Capsian  Spanish 
caves  (Alpera  and  Cogul).  The  result  very  forcibly  sug- 
gests that  both  are  still  further  stylistic  representations  of 
human  figures  reduced  to  their  lowest  terms.  '  Perhaps,' 
adds  Macalister,  '  we  shall  not  greatly  err  if  we  suppose 
that  these  pebbles  were  what  may  be  called  "  soul-houses," 
abodes  for  the  spirits  of  deceased  members  of  the  com- 
munity, and  as  such  associated  with  a  cult  of  the  dead.' * 
The  remarkable  fact  is  that  the  wonderful  Magdalenian 
art  has  entirely  disappeared,  or  degenerated  into  the  rude 
outlines  on  the  pebbles. 

We  do  not,  however,  know  very  much  about  Azilian 
psychology  as  expressed  in  burials,  for  few  strictly  Azilian 
skeletons  have  been  found.  There  is  the  same  staining 
of  the  bones  with  red  ochre  as  before,  which  implies  an 
initial  temporary  burial  or  the  application  of  some  method 
by  which  the  flesh  was  separated  from  the  bones.  In  the 
Greater  Ofnet,  one  of  two  caves  near  Nordlingen  (Wurtem- 
berg),  which  showed  more  or  less  continuous  occupation 
from  the  base  of  the  Late  Palaeolithic,  a  couple  of  pits 
had  been  sunk  through  the  Magdalenian  stratum.  They 
were  lined  with  a  coating  of  red  ochre,  and  into  one  of 
them  twenty-seven  skulls  had  been  closely  packed,  with 
the  aid  of  fine  earth  similarly  coloured.  All  the  skulls 
were  arranged  to  face  the  west,  and  showed  that  the  heads 
had  been  severed  from  the  bodies  and  buried  in  that  state. 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  531.  This  suggestion,  making  these  pebbles  comparable 
to  the  native  Australian  churinga  or  bull-roarer,  is  criticised  by  Mainage, 
op.  cit.  pp.  196-198. 


150     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Similarly  six  skulls  had  been  deposited  in  the  second  pit. 
Flints  and  ornaments — thousands  of  perforated  shells  and 
deer-teeth  strung  as  tiaras  and  necklaces — were  buried 
with  the  skulls,  which  represented  an  instance  of  the 
peculiar  practice  of  head-burial  or  cephalotaphy,  to  use 
Macalister's  term,  which  had  already  come  into  existence 
in  Magdalenian  times.  The  skulls  were  both  of  the 
dolichocephalic  and  brachy cephalic  types,  with  some 
intermediate  forms  comparable  to  those  found  in  the 
oldest  Neolithic  lake-dwellings  of  Central  Europe. 

Evidence  of  this  Azilian  stage  has  been  found  at  other 
stations,  particularly  in  Northern  Spain  and  Southern 
France,  in  Germany,  possibly  in  the  Schweizersbild  rock- 
shelter  near  Schaffhausen,  and  apparently  in  the  British 
Isles.  Sometimes  associated  with  Azilian  remains  are 
the  so-called  Tardenoisian l  '  pygmy '  flints,  usually 
under  an  inch  in  length,  of  varying  yet  often  geometric 
form,  which  may  have  been  fashioned  for  harpoon  teeth 
and  other  purposes,  and  which  we  have  already  seen  to 
be  an  evolution  of  the  Capsian  flint  industry.2  On  the 
basis  of  these  '  pygmy '  flints  and  the  absence  of  pottery,  it 
would  seem  best  to  correlate  at  this  point  the  Maglemose 
peat-moss  deposits  in  the  island  of  Seeland  in  Northern 
Europe.  These  correspond  to  the  period  when  the  Baltic 
was  closed  at  both  ends,  forming  the  so-called  freshwater 
Ancylus  Lake.3  Occupation  evidently  began  when  the 
site  was  a  large  lake,  and  continued  throughout  the 
drying-up  process  that  transformed  it  into  a  peat-bog. 
Many  considerations  indicate  that  the  population  lived 
on  a  large  raft,  or  series  of  rafts,  close  to  the  shore.  The 
implements  were  all  made  of  stone,  bone,  or  horn,  some 
of  them  rather  unusual,  and  explained  as  netting-needles 
for  making  fishing-nets.  A  slightly  later  deposit  at 

1  From  the  type  station  at  Fere-en-Tardenois  (Aisne).     2  Cf.  p.  145. 

8  The  name,  as  that  of  the  preceding  Yoldia  Sea  stage,  when  the 
Baltic  had  an  outlet  to  the  North  Sea,  and  the  Littorina  Sea  stage, 
subsequent  to  the  Ancylus  Lake,  when  the  Baltic  was  opened  again 
by  land  depression  to  the  south-west,  is  derived  from  the  principal 
mollusc  in  the  deposits  of  these  different  bodies  of  water. 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN        151 

Viby  near  Aarhus  yielded  the  first  evidence  of  the  use 
of  the  boomerang  in  Europe,  as  also  the  end  of  a 
wooden  bow. 

Showing  affinities  with  the  Tardenoisian  culture  also 
are  the  shell-heaps  in  connection  with  certain  early 
settlements  discovered  at  Mugem  in  the  valley  of  the 
river  Tagus  in  Portugal.  In  the  course  of  the  excava- 
tions some  six  hundred  skeletons  were  brought  to  light. 
If  the  burials  had  apparently  been  less  individual  than 
in  previous  cases,  yet  they  were  not  altogether  without 
regard  for  the  future  welfare  of  the  deceased,  as  evidenced 
by  the  presence  of  numerous  flints.  The  deposits,  in 
containing  no  polished  stone  implements  or  pottery  or 
traces  of  domesticated  animals,  as  also  in  the  presence 
of  '  pygmy '  flints,  are  undoubtedly  Mesolithic.  While  the 
majority  of  the  skulls  were  dolichocephalic,  there  was 
clear  evidence  as  at  Ofnet  not  merely  of  a  brachycephalic 
strain,  but  of  a  mixture  between  the  two.  Now  Palaeo- 
lithic man  was  distinctively  dolichocephalic,  while 
Neolithic  man  shows  definite  strains  of  both  types,  as 
also  blends.  It  is  noteworthy,  then,  that  in  this  inter- 
mediate or  Mesolithic  period  we  find  the  first  evidence  on 
a  large  scale  of  brachycephaly  in  Europe  ;  the  Piltdown, 
and  a  few  of  the  Krapina  skulls  were  the  sole  previous 
examples  noted.  Central  Asia  is  the  recent  home  of  brachy- 
cephaly, and  it  is  to  this  region  that  we  look  again  as  the 
womb  from  which  issued  these  successive  birth-waves  of 
human  life  that  spread  eastward  and  westward  alike.  Con- 
firmation of  the  presence  now  of  this  short-headed  race  in 
Europe  is  found  in  the  caves  at  Furfooz  on  the  Lesse  in 
Belgium.  This  westward  movement  from  Central  Asia 
was  a  long  slow  diffusive  movement  of  '  peaceful  penetra- 
tion,' in  which  the  nomadic  herdsman,  reaching  out  to  find 
fresh  pastures,  followed  a  line  which  in  the  end  brought 
him  into  Central  Europe.  There  he  apparently  at  first 
proved  superior  to  the  declining  dolichocephalic  popula- 
tion, with  whom  he  mixed,  teaching  them  what  he  knew 
about  the  domestication  of  animals  and  pastoral  life 


152     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

generally.  With  the  passage  of  time,  and  consequent 
on  this  infusion  of  new  blood,  the  dolichocephalic  popula- 
tion reasserted  itself,  and  while  that  of  Europe  to-day  is 
very  mixed,  the  purely  brachycephalic  people  are  mainly 
represented  in  certain  mountainous  areas  whither  they 
were  driven  from  the  plains. 

We  are  now  at  the  middle  of  the  Mesolithic  period, 
that  critically  formative  episode  in  the  life  of  the  Europe 
of  to-day,  for  while  the  Azilian  phase  is  more  Palaeolithic 
than  Neolithic,  the  succeeding  Campignian  is  on  the  whole 
more  Neolithic  than  Palaeolithic.  It  takes  its  name  from 
a  hut-site  at  Le  Campigny,  a  hill  near  the  town  of  Blangy- 
sur-Bresle  (Seine-Inferieure) .  Amongst  flint  implements 
of  already  familiar  types  are  flake  knives  like  those  of 
the  Magdalenian,  scrapers,  saws,  engravers,  and  borers. 
But  there  are  also  two  new  distinctive  types — a  sort  of 
pick-like  bar  of  flint  about  8-15  centimetres  long,  with 
blunt  points  at  either  end,  and  a  chisel-like  implement, 
made  out  of  a  nodule  of  flint,  sometimes  referred  to  as 
the  '  kitchen-midden  axe  '  from  the  frequency  with  which 
it  is  found  in  the  '  kitchen-middens  '  or  shell-heaps  of 
Denmark.  There  is  no  suggestion  as  yet  of  the  art  of 
polishing  stone,  but  pottery  was  now  in  use,  and  the 
presence  of  mill-stones  seems  to  prove  that  agriculture 
was  now  practised.  The  fauna  and  flora  were  essentially 
modern. 

Campignian  sites  have  been  described  at  various  points 
in  France  and  Germany,  in  Italy,  England  and  Ireland. 
According  to  Macalister,  Campignian  is  the  oldest  culture 
that  appears  in  Ireland,1  as,  similarly,  Azilian  in  Scotland  : 
but  throughout  we  must  allow  sometimes  for  consider- 
able overlapping  of  phases.  Particularly  characteristic, 
although  of  varying  age,  are  the  Danish  shell-heaps, 
enormous  piles  at  different  points  on  the  coast,  sometimes 
as  much  as  800-1000  feet  in  length,  140-200  feet  in 
breadth,  and  10  feet  in  height,  and  consisting  for  the 
most  part  of  oyster,  scallop,  and  other  shells,  the  broken 
bones  of  various  mammals  (especially  deer  and  wild  boar), 

»  Op.  cit.  p.  554. 


FIG.  23. — Examples  of  Campignian  Pottery  (1-4)  and  Flint  Implements 
(5-10)  :  5,  a  saw  ;  6,  a  double  scraper  ;  7-9,  chisel  or  Danish  '  kitchen- 
midden  axe' ;  10,  a  pick.  (From  R.  Munro's  Palaeolithic  Man.) 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN       153 

birds  and  deep-sea  fish,  together  with  rudely  chipped 
unpolished  flint  implements,  combs,  daggers,  awls,  and 
needles  of  bone,  and  shreds  of  coarse  pottery,  but  no 
cultivated  plants  except  wheat.  The  characteristic  pick 
and  chisel-axe  date  these  refuse-heaps  with  tolerable 
accuracy.  Certain  circular  depressions  on  the  surface 
are  supposed  to  indicate  the  site  of  the  huts  or  shelters 
in  which  this  rather  needy  population  lived  all  the  year 
round,  although  apparently  in  a  climate  that  was  some- 
what warmer  on  the  whole  in  that  particular  locality 
than  it  is  to-day.  No  graves  or  human  remains  have 
been  found,  but  there  was  evidence  of  the  domestica- 
tion of  a  small  species  of  dog.  Detailed  examination  of 
the  depressed  shoreline  and  the  character  of  the  molluscs 
on  the  shell-heaps  prove  that  they  correspond  to  that 
phase  of  the  history  of  the  Baltic  known  as  the  Littorina 
Sea,  when  it  had  an  even  more  open  connection  with  the 
North  Sea  and  was  more  salt  than  at  the  present  time. 
The  Campignian  culture  has  also  been  recognised  at 
sites  in  Norway  and  Sweden,  having  been  carried  across 
the  land  bridge  that  ran  northward  from  Jutland  during 
the  Ancylus  period.  In  fact,  it  almost  looks  as  if  this 
Southern  Baltic  region  may  have  been  the  principal 
centre  of  distribution  of  the  Campignian  culture,  which 
was  then  '  taken  up  and  carried  '  farther  west  and  south 
'  by  the  invading  Asiatic.' l  The  culture  itself,  however, 
is  linked,  through  the  harpoons  and  '  pygmy '  flints,  not 
merely  with  the  Azilian,  but  also  through  well-known 
rock  engravings  in  Norway  and  Sweden  with  Magdalenian 
art  itself.  Of  Campignian  man,  so  few  skeletal  remains 
are  known  that  it  is  not  yet  possible  to  make  any  reliable 
statements  with  regard  to  his  physical  characters.  This 
whole  transition  period  gives  the  impression  of  a  clash 
of  cultures  and  silent  conflict  of  peoples  as  the  steady 
flow  from  the  east  seeped  in  amongst  the  scattered 
communities  of  Europe,  each  of  which  had  been  living  its 
own  kind  of  life,  and  so  reacted  in  very  different  ways 
in  presence  of  the  new  stimulus. 

1  Macalister,  op.  cit.  p.  569. 


154     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

The  relationship  of  the  Mesolithic  and  Neolithic  stages 
with  the  later  phases  of  the  Ice  Age  may  be  approxi- 
mately represented  as  follows  : 

LATE  PLEISTOCENE  AND  POST-PLEISTOCENE 


GEOLOGICAL  PHASES. 

ARCHAEOLOGICAL  PHASES. 

Western  and 
Middle  Europe. 

Northern 
Europe. 

Western  and 
Middle  Europe. 

Northern 
Europe. 

Asia  and 
Africa. 

Date 

B.C. 

Europe. 

- 

Beech 
Oak 

Iron 
Bronze 

.-< 

Bronze 

1500 

1900- 
2500 

— 

Oak 

— 

— 

Copper 
Pre-dynastic 
Egyptians 

— 

- 

Fir 

Neolithic 

- 

- 

8000 

IV.  Daun 
(glacial) 

Littorina 
Oak  Phase 
(Baltic  with 
wider  outlet 
than  present] 

Campignian 

Shell- 
heaps 

Sumerian 

9000 

III.  Gschnitz 
(glacial) 

Ancylus 
Pine  Phase 
(Baltic  a 
fresh-water 
lake) 

Azilian-Tar- 
denoisian 

Magle- 
mose 

Anau 
founded. 
Neolithic 
settlements 
in  Crete 

I2,OOO 

Loess    for- 
mation 

— 

Late  Mag- 
dalenian 

— 

Susa 
founded 

— 

Steppe 

Yoldia  Phase 

— 

- 

- 

- 

Tundra 

Swedish- 
Finnish 
moraines 

Middle  Mag- 
dalenian 

— 

— 

— 

II.  Buhl 
(glacial) 

Early  Mag- 
dalenian  and 
Capsian 
invasion 

~ 

'.. 

20,000 

Tundra 

- 

Solutrean 

- 

- 

- 

Steppe 

- 

Aurignacian 

- 

- 

- 

I.  Aachen 
(glacial) 

— 

— 

~ 

~ 

FIG.  24. — Restoration  of  Neolithic  Man,  under  the  direction  of  Mons.  Rutot. 

(By  permission.) 
i  f'f*  155- 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN       155 

The  term  Neolithic,  then,  is  applied  to  remains  of  man 
and  his  handicraft  that  are  specially  distinguished  in  the 
case  of  the  latter  by  the  fact  that  on  the  whole  they  are 
smooth  and  polished  and  very  finely  worked  as  com- 
pared with  those  of  his  Palaeolithic  predecessors.  In  the 
history  of  man  as  a  whole,  the  Neolithic  Age  closes  about 
2000  B.C.,  when  bronze  became  known  in  Western  Europe, 
but  certain  tribes  may  be  considered  to  be  still  on  the 
cultural  level  of  Neolithic  times,  although  they  are  not 
Neolithic  people.  The  life  of  Neolithic  times  differs  in 
certain  broad  respects  from  that  of  the  Palaeolithic  Age. 
Man,  now  that  he  is  no  longer  persistently  nomadic,  can 
accumulate ;  the  sense  of  property  is  very  old,  as  we 
can  see  from  its  marked  development  in  children.  He 
begins  to  domesticate  animals,  and  agriculture,  the 
development  of  which  was  certainly  a  slow  process,  is 
also  introduced  into  Western  Europe  from  farther  east. 
Pottery  is  also  a  distinctive  feature  of  Neolithic  times. 

The  examination  of  Neolithic  skeletons  shows  that  man 
was  still  evolving  physically,  though  very  slowly.  Dolicho- 
cephalic, with  a  cranial  capacity  equivalent  to  that  of 
modern  man  and  sometimes  exceeding  it,  Neolithic  man 
in  England  differed  in  some  interesting  respects  from 
his  successors.  His  teeth  met  edge-on  when  closed,  and 
wore  one  another  down  :  they  were  also  more  regularly 
arranged,  while  the  palate  was  not  so  contracted  as  in 
modern  man — changes  that  are  all  probably  consequent 
upon  change  in  diet.  Neolithic  man  throughout  Europe, 
and  indeed  on  the  African  side  of  the  Mediterranean, 
shows  these  same  general  characteristics,  although  negroid 
features  have  been  noticed  in  addition  in  Neolithic  skulls 
from  Egypt  and  elsewhere.  A  very  good  example  of 
Neolithic  man  of  the  earlier  period  is  the  so-called  Tilbury 
man,1  whose  remains  were  found  in  1883  at  a  depth  of 
35  feet  beneath  the  present  surface,  or  3  feet  below  the 
actual  land  surface  of  his  day.  These  remains  may  per- 

1  See  accounts  in  Keith's  Ancient  Types  of  Man  (1911),  and  Tht 
Antiquity  of  Man,  pp.  25-30. 


156     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

haps  be  taken  as  typical  of  the  English  Neolithic  people, — 
somewhat  under  medium  stature,  but  '  with  well-shaped 
heads  of  rather  more  than  average  size.' 1  The  evidence 
indicating  that  subsidence  in  the  lower  reaches  of  the 
valleys  of  the  Thames  and  Medway  2  has  been  in  progress 
at  a  rate  of  4  feet  in  a  thousand  years,  would,  if  the  rate 
has  been  uniform,  make  the  Tilbury  man  a  contemporary 
of  the  Pre-dynastic  Egyptians  between  seven  and  eight 
thousand  years  ago.  In  calculating  the  duration  of  the 
Neolithic  period  there  are  many  factors  to  be  taken  into 
consideration.  There  is  in  particular  the  evidence, 
through  continuity  of  deposits,  that  England  and  the 
Channel  Islands  were  part  of  the  Continent  of  Europe  so 
recently  as  the  beginning  of  the  Post-Pleistocene.  There 
was  therefore  a.  wide  range  of  territory  over  which  Neo- 
lithic man  could  wander  from  his  eastern  source.  Time 
has  to  be  allowed  for  the  formation  of  the  English  Channel 
by  subsidence  and  erosion.  Greater  assurance  can  be 
placed  in  the  conclusion  that  indicates  the  close  of  the 
Neolithic  Age  as  about  aopo  B.C.  than  on  any  date  fixed 
as  its  opening.  It  probably  lasted  between  seven  and  nine 
thousand  years,  which  if  the  inside  figure  is  taken,  would 
indicate  the  commencement  as  roughly  about  9000  B.C. 

In  reconstructing  the  Europe  of  Neolithic  time  we  have 
to  take  note  of  considerable  physico-geographical  changes 
that  synchronised  with  the  close  of  the  Pleistocene.  It 
is  most  natural  to  correlate  the  period  of  maximum  glacia- 
tion  with  periods  of  land  elevation,  although  there  may 
have  been  local  variations,  and  subsidences  have  been 
going  on  in  England  while  elevation  was  in  progress  in 
Scotland.  But,  on  the  whole,  there  is  evidence  in  Britain 
of  a  period  of  depression,  probably  in  part  induced  by  the 
sheer  weight  of  the  ice-sheet,  which  as  it  gradually  re- 
treated, may  have  left  this  country  entirely  separated 
from  the  Continent,  and  transformed  into  an  archipelago, 

1  Keith,  The  Antiquity  of  Man,  pp.  9  and  43. 

*  This  subsidence  affected  the  whole  southern  part  of  England  :  on 
the  other  hand,  a  movement  of  elevation  was  in  progress  in  Scotland. 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN        157 

whose  coast-lines  now  show  in  some  places  at  a  height 
of  1300  feet  above  the  present  level.  A  corresponding 
depression  over  a  large  area  of  North- Western  Europe 
for  a  prolonged  period  may  well  have  had  a  disrupting 
and  dispersing,  if  not  a  seriously  eliminating,  effect  upon 
the  Magdalenians.  Of  the  extent  of  this  depression 
it  is  impossible  to  give  any  exact  account.  If  the 
separation  of  Great  Britain  from  the  Continent  was 
complete,  thus  breaking  a  land  connection  that  had 
been  preserved  in  varying  degree  from  the  Riss-Wiirmian 
interglacial  phase  onwards,  then  it  appears  that  it  was 
while  this  immense  area  was  once  more  being  slowly 
elevated  that  the  Neolithic  human  waves  began  to 
enter  Europe  from  the  east.  It  is,  however,  possible 
that  Neolithic  man  reached  Britain  by  a  land  connec- 
tion that  still  persisted.  Certain  it  is,  however,  that 
he  lived  through  the  last  readjustment  and  subsidence 
that  once  again  made  an  English  Channel.  It  is  when 
we  come  to  estimate  the  time  required  to  produce  the 
change  to  the  scenery  and  contours  with  which  we  are 
familiar  to-day,  that  we  realise  the  necessity  to  posit 
a  considerable  period  which  for  the  Neolithic  alone  may 
well  have  been  9000  years. 

Of  the  various  features  that  have  already  been  men- 
tioned as  characteristic  of  the  Neolithic  Age,  undoubtedly 
that  one  which  led  to  the  great  advance  in  civilisation 
was  the  discovery,  however  made,  of  the  possibility 
of  domesticating  certain  animals.  There  is  no  shred 
of  evidence  that  this  idea  had  ever  entered  the  mind  of 
Palaeolithic  man.  He  had  to  go  out  after  every  form  of 
animal  life  that  he  desired,  whether  for  food  or  clothing. 
Hence  his  characteristically  nomadic  hunter's  life,  con- 
tinually compelled  to  seek  fresh  hunting-grounds.  It  is 
almost  certain  that  the  first  animal  to  be  domesticated — 
man's  oldest  friend  and  ally — was  some  kind  of  jackal- 
like  dog.  Its  value  as  a  watcher  and  in  the  chase  would 
quickly  be  appreciated.  With  its  help  the  possibility  of 
securing  and  keeping  food-animals  was  increased.  At 


158     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

first  small  (Canis  familiaris  palustris),  towards  the  close 
of  the  period,  and  in  association  with  the  evident  increase 
in  flocks  of  sheep,  a  larger  form  appears,  of  a  more  wolfish 
aspect.  This  domestication  of  food-animals  meant  a 
great  saving  of  time  for  man,  which  he  could  thus  put  to 
other  purposes  :  to  some  extent  also  it  meant  the  removal 
of  the  dread  of  want.  It  further  implied  that  man  could 
settle  for  slightly  longer  periods  in  localities,  and  such 
settlement  meant  the  opportunity  to  accumulate  property. 
On  the  steppes  of  Central  Asia  man  for  the  first  time 
captured  and  began  to  tame  the  wild  horses,  cattle,  goats, 
and  sheep  amidst  which  he  lived. 

Neolithic  deposits  which  are  typically  represented  by 
remains  of  land  habitations,  lake-dwellings,  sepulchral 
and  religious  structures,  and  implements  of  polished 
stone,  are  often  disappointing,  in  that  being  more  super- 
ficial than  those  of  Palaeolithic  times,  they  have  been  less 
protected  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  more  easily 
recognised  and  disturbed,  whether  by  men  seeking  for 
buried  treasure  or  by  burrowing  animals.  As  a  result 
their  chronological  value  has  been  sometimes  destroyed, 
and  their  actual  value  greatly  diminished  through  ruthless 
robbery.  Neolithic  cave  remains  are  not  uncommon,  but 
the  marked  development  in  civilisation  and  growth  of 
population  made  caves  as  a  general  rule  too  confined 
and  unsuitable  as  occupational  sites.  The  most  common 
type  of  land  habitation  was  a  circular  pit-dwelling,  some 
6  feet  in  diameter,  excavated  to  a  varying  depth  of  from 
3  to  6  feet,  with  a  conical,  wattled  superstructure  plastered 
with  clay.  The  hearth  was  hi  the  centre.  As  the  period 
progressed  there  was  development  in  the  type  of  dwelling- 
place,  with  differentiation  and  elaboration  sometimes  in 
the  case  of  the  central  structure,  which  is  regarded 
accordingly  as  having  been  that  of  the  head  of  the  com- 
munity. At  Grosgartach  near  Heilbronn  in  the  Neckar 
Valley,  a  Late  Neolithic  village  was  carefully  explored  by 
Hofrath  A.  Schliz.  In  this  instance  the  two-roomed 
house  of  the  chief  was  rectangular — 5' 80  metres  by  5*35 


FIG.  25.— Reconstructed  Lake-Dwellings.     (From  J.  M.  Tyler's 
New  Stone  Age  in  N.  Europe. ) 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN       159 

metres — with  an  outer  wall  of  posts  supporting  between 
them  a  wattling  of  twigs,  plastered  with  clay.  The 
sleeping-room  was  on  the  level  of  the  ground,  while  the 
kitchen,  which  was  the  larger  of  the  two,  was  sunk  to  the 
depth  of  one  metre,  and  entered  by  an  inclined  plane. 
Something  like  a  primitive  farm  building  was  also  exposed 
in  the  vicinity,  with  stalls  and  a  granary  floor.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  however,  there  was  very  considerable 
variety  in  the  types  of  structure  and  mode  of  life  in  the 
Neolithic  settlements  in  different  parts  of  Europe  through- 
out that  period.  On  the  whole,  the  settlements  north  of 
the  Alps  and  round  the  Baltic  were  neither  so  large  or 
well  developed  as  those  in  Italy  or  the  Balkan  Peninsula. 
The  northern  communities  were  more  of  the  nature  of 
pioneer  settlements  with  no  great  wealth  to  defend,  such 
as  induced  the  habit  in  the  south  of  fortifying  villages, 
before  the  close  of  the  Neolithic  Age.  But  in  any  case  it 
was  a  matter  of  finding  the  spots  where,  with  greatest  ease, 
clearings  could  be  made  in  the  primeval  forest,  or  seeking 
the  more  open  steppe  regions,  which  are  still  recognisable 
in  the  Germany  and  Czecho-Slovakia  of  to-day. 

More  characteristic  in  their  way  were  the  lake-dwellings 
of  Neolithic  times.  Remains  of  these  are  found  especially 
in  Switzerland,  and  on  the  Italian  lakes  :  they  are  in 
evidence  on  the  New  Guinea  coastlands  to-day.  Com- 
.  munities  that  settled  on  a  lakeshore  obviously  possessed 
advantages  that  tribes  wandering  in  the  woodlands  or 
on  the  steppes  could  not  enjoy.  The  resources  of  both 
water  and  land  were  at  their  disposal,  and  by  means  of 
navigation  they  could  add  to  the  interest  of  their  existence 
through  barter  or  piracy.  Safety  could  be  sought  in 
their  hollowed  boats,  but  was  more  certainly  secured  for 
themselves  and  their  belongings  by  living  off  the  shore 
in  huts  upon  platforms  supported  on  piles  driven  into 
the  mud  or  sand  of  the  shelving  beach.  The  labour 
expended  in  the  erection  of  these  lakeshore  habitations 
must  have  been  enormous,  particularly  when  we  consider 
that  a  stone  axe  and  fire  were  the  principal  tools  at  the 


160      THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

disposal  of  the  builders.  Thus  it  has  been  calculated 
that  at  Robenhausen,  on  the  south  side  of  Lake  Pfafnkon 
in  Switzerland,  more  than  100,000  piles  had  been  used. 
They  were  in  three  sets,  at  as  many  different  levels, 
pointing  to  three  successive  occupations  of  the  site.  The 
sharpened  piles  were  apparently  driven  in  by  heavy  stone 
mallets,  and  further  supported  in  some  instances  by 
accumulations  of  stones  dropped  in  between  them.  The 
houses  erected  on  the  platforms  were  generally  rect- 
angular, and  of  distinctly  larger  size  than  those  found  in- 
land, although  of  similar  construction.  These  Swiss  lake 
stations  are  peculiarly  rich  in  antiquities.  The  hearths, 
composed  of  three  or  four  stone  slabs,  were  not  always 
safe,  and  on  many  occasions  the  whole  station  seems  to 
have  been  destroyed  by  fire.  The  lacustrine  mud 
below  proved  a  sound  preservative  receptacle  for  all 
manner  of  objects. 

Thus  of  animals,  remains  of  more  than  seventy  species 
have  been  discovered,  of  which  perhaps  six  were  domesti- 
cated. Bones  of  the  stag  and  ox  are  most  common. 
Bos  brachyceros  seems  to  have  been  an  imported  and 
domesticated  form  :  the  wild  ox  or  urus  (Bos  primigenius) , 
whose  bones  and  long  spreading  horns  are  also  found, 
was  not  in  process  of  domestication  till  towards  the  close 
of  the  Neolithic  Age.  The  same  is  true  of  the  horse. 
Both  for  cattle  and  for  horses,  the  Bronze  Age  was  the 
era  of  domestication.  Other  domesticated  and  imported 
forms  were  the  so-called  '  turbary '  pig  (Sus  scrofa  palustris) 
— to  be  distinguished  from  the  native  wild  boar  (Sus 
scrofa  ferus),  whose  remains  as  a  product  of  the  chase 
also  occur — together  with  the  goat  and  '  turbary '  sheep. 
The  latter  (Ovis  aries  palustris)  is  apparently  the  result 
of  the  crossing  of  three  other  distinct  forms.  '  The  bal- 
ance of  probabilities,'  says  Professor  J.  M.  Tyler,1  '  seems 
to  incline  toward  the  view  that  the  turbary  sheep  came 
into  Europe  from  western  and  central  Asia  with  other 
"  turbary  "  forms,  that  it  had  been  long  domesticated,  and 

1  The  New  Stone  Age  in  Northern  Europe,  p.  79. 


MESOLITH1C  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN       161 

either  here  or  on  its  westward  migration  may  have  more 
or  less  crossed  with  the  descendants  of  other  varieties.' 

The  mere  presence  of  these  forms,  which  were  kept  in 
stalls  on  the  platform  through  the  winter,  proves  that 
the  Neolithic  lake-dwellers  practised  agriculture,  to  pro- 
vide them  with  food.  Wheat  and  barley  in  particular 
were  cultivated.  Of  both  of  these  forms  there  were 
several  varieties,  and  also  two  kinds  of  millet.  Oats  do 
not  appear  before  the  Bronze  Age.  The  remains  also 
of  many  different  kinds  of  fruits  were  found.  Neolithic 
man  in  these  localities  occasionally  flavoured  his  wheaten 
bread  with  cultivated  caraway  seeds. 

Amongst  Neolithic  industries,  in  addition  to  the  funda- 
mental pursuits  of  tillage  and  stock-raising,  basket- 
making  held  a  high  place,  and  they  also  knew  how  to 
spin,  weave,  and  dye  flax,  making  cloth  and  thread  and 
rope  from  it.  The  use  of  wool  quickly  followed.  Most 
characteristic  of  all  are  the  stone  axes  and  pottery,  and 
as  their  development  can  be  distinctly  traced,  they 
give  great  assistance  in  fixing  the  comparative  dates  of 
deposits. 

Although  the  Neolithic  Age  takes  it  name  from  the 
distinctive  polished  stone  implements  of  that  period,  it 
is  important  to  bear  in  mind  that  not  all  Neolithic  stone 
implements  were  polished,  although  the  majority  un- 
doubtedly were.  Palaeolithic  man  chipped  and  flaked 
his  flints  by  blows,  and  later,  more  delicately,  by  pressure : 
he  never  seems  to  have  ground  or  polished  his  implements, 
and  in  any  case  flint  is  a  difficult  substance  to  polish. 
In  the  Magdalenian  period,  bone  implements  were 
smoothed  and  polished,  and  probably  the  first  attempts 
in  stone  were  made  in  regions — whether  in  Asia  or  Europe 
we  do  not  know — where  flint  was  scarce.  Flint,  however, 
was  still  the  principal  raw  material  for  the  manufacture 
of  tool-heads  :  consequently  it  was  eagerly  sought  after 
and  prized.  Neolithic  flint  mines  and  tool  factories  are 
a  feature  of  the  Neolithic  records,  as  at  Grand  Pressigny 
near  Tours  (France),  Spiennes  in  Belgium,  and  Cissbury 
L 


162     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

in  England.  The  Neolithic  workers  not  merely  used 
different  kinds  of  pebbles,  but  had  learned  to  discern 
minerals  harder  than  flint,  such  as  nephrite  or  jade  and 
saussurite,  making  small  chisel-like  blades  which  they 
set  in  a  socket  of  horn  ;  the  latter  was  in  turn  fixed  in  a 
wooden  handle.  Of  the  implements  or  celts  with  flint 
or  stone  heads  there  is  a  great  variety  in  shape  and 
manufacture.  They  ranged  in  length  from  one  or  two 
up  to  as  many  as  twelve  inches.  The  handles  were 
usually  of  wood  or  the  antlers  of  deer.  Some  were  in  the 
form  of  primitive  hoes  or  mattocks  ;  others,  more  adze- 
like,  with  a  sharp  transverse  edge,  were  used  for  hollow- 
ing out  boats.  Salt,  gold  in  small  quantities,  copper, 
amber,  and  the  various  hard  minerals  used  in  the  manu- 
facture of  stone  axes  became  also  commodities  of  barter 
and  exchange  over  increasingly  wide  areas,  as  the  use  of 
cattle  as  beasts  of  burden,  and  greater  skill  in  the  construc- 
tion of  boats,  enabled  Neolithic  man  to  come  and  go  in 
the  development  of  Neolithic  trade. 

If  there  is  no  evidence  as  yet  of  the  domestication  of 
the  horse  in  Europe,  and  no  wheeled  cart  is  known  before 
the  Bronze  Age,  still  the  trails  of  Neolithic  man  led  by 
the  less  heavily  wooded  uplands,  or  by  the  sides  of  the 
rivers,  or  along  the  shores  of  the  lakes,  from  one  known 
point  to  another.  Several  of  the  greatest  civilisations  of 
the  world  are  associated  with  a  river  valley,  and  it  was 
not  otherwise  in  Neolithic  times,  as  the  Danube  could 
evidence.  If  Magdalenian  man  was  something  of  a 
fisherman,  Neolithic  man  was  even  more  so.  The 
occupants  of  the  Danish  shell-heaps  went  out  far  enough 
to  catch  cod,  and  emigrants  from  Asia  Minor  constructed 
boats  that  took  them  to  Crete.  Before  the  end  of  this  Age 
there  were  trade  routes  between  the  countries  around  the 
Baltic,  while  the  shores  of  the  Black  Sea  and  the  rivers 
falling  into  it  were  also  the  scenes  of  expeditions  for  trade 
or  plunder.  There  is  further  evidence  of  close  communica- 
tion between  the  Mediterranean  lands  and  Egypt  and 
Asia  Minor ;  indeed,  the  territorial  limits  of  Neolithic 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN       163 

commerce  have  still  to  be  discovered.  Certainly  the 
trade  in  amber  followed  a  well-marked  route  by  way  of 
the  Vistula  and  Dniester  between  the  Baltic  and  the 
Mediterranean.  Perhaps  the  mutual  desire  to  exchange 
amber  for  copper  between  the  north  and  south,  led,  as 
has  been  suggested,  to  the  more  rapid  passing  of  the 
Neolithic  Age.  in  Northern  Europe.  For  with  these 
commodities  must  have  gone  much  exchange  of  ideas  and 
customs,  and  most  of  what  was  new  in  those  days  came 
into  the  south  of  Europe  from  the  east.  But  there  is 
also  evidence  that  the  north  did  not  merely  receive,  but 
critically  examined,  and  in  many  cases  improved  upon 
that  which  was  introduced  to  them,  by  admixture  with 
what  was  local,  whether  in  the  business  of  stock  raising, 
or  the  expression  of  ideas  in  implements  and  works  of 
art.  Amongst  the  latter  group,  pottery  holds  an  out- 
standing place.  Indeed,  as  Professor  J.  M.  Tyler  remarks, 
'  pottery  is  to  the  archaeologist  what  characteristic  fossils 
are  to  the  palaeontologist.' 1  It  is  fairly  indestructible, 
and  by  its  texture,  form,  and  decoration  provides  an 
admirable  indication  of  date  and  relationship.  As  we 
have  seen,  pottery  is  not  known  before  Mesolithic  days. 
Shells  and  gourds,  skulls,  skins,  and  vessels  of  bark  and 
wood  were  probably  all  used  as  receptacles  for  fluids 
before  the  potter's  art  was  discovered.  His  wheel  is 
not  known  before  the  Bronze  Age,  although  beautiful 
and  well-made  work  has  been  described  by  Pumpelly 
from  the  oldest  deposits  at  Susa.  The  more  artistic 
pieces  have  been  often  found  in  graves. 

By  far  the  most  important  witnesses  to  Neolithic  man 
and  the  spirit  that  was  in  him  are  the  megalithic  struc- 
tures that  he  erected  in  such  numbers  throughout  the 
world.  Varying  greatly  both  in  size  and  form,  they  are 
yet  '  reducible  to  two  fundamental  types,  the  polylith  or 
cell  and  the  monolith  or  block,'  2  To  the  former  class  are 
referable  the  so-called  cromlechs  or  dolmens  (stone 
chambers),  cairns,  tumuli  or  barrows  ;  under  the  second 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  153.  •  A.  II.  Keane,  Ethnology,  p.  123. 


164     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

group  are  included  the  menhirs,  alignments  or  avenues, 
and  stone  circles.  Both  groups  are  associated  with  burial 
and  religious  rites,  probably  connected,  in  some  cases, 
with  ancestor-worship.  The  simplest  type  of  cell  or 
dolmen  was  a  rectangular  sepulchral  chamber  made  by 
setting  up  four  or  more  megaliths  on  edge  with  little  or 
no  foundation  excavated,  and  covering  them  with  a  still 
larger  horizontal  slab.  Usually  the  stone  at  one  end, 
facing  the  east,  was  somewhat  smaller,  leaving  an  aperture 
between  it  and  the  roof,  through  which  access  was  gained 
to  the  chamber.  The  megaliths  in  these  simpler  structures, 
such  as  are  found  so  commonly  in  Sweden  and  Denmark 
to-day,  are  ordinarily  from  5  to  7  feet  in  length,  2  to  3^ 
feet  wide,  and  3  to  5  feet  high.  Within  this  chamber  were 
deposited  the  bodies  of  the  dead — it  might  be  more  than 
one — or  urns  containing  their  ashes  when  cremation  was 
in  vogue,  with  or  without  gifts.  The  cell  was  then 
covered  with  a  heap  of  earth,  thus  producing  the  cairn 
or  tumulus,  particularly  when  the  chamber  or  system 
of  chambers  was  of  any  size  or  length.  In  some  cases, 
particularly  in  the  original  Egyptian  graves,  the  tumulus 
was  further  supported  by  a  containing  wall,  or  walls,  of 
stones  (mastaba).  In  some  of  the  simple  types  there 
was  a  doorway  composed  of  two  upright  stones  and  a 
lintel.  In  Denmark  and  elsewhere,  occasionally  these 
tumuli  are  approached  by  a  covered  culvert-like  entrance, 
formed  out  of  blocks  of  stone,  the  whole  structure  thus 
bearing  a  striking  resemblance  to  primitive  dwellings. 
Under  the  action  of  prolonged  weathering  the  super- 
structure has  often  disappeared,  when  the  original  cell 
and  remains  of  the  mastaba  (if  present)  are  left  exposed 
as  'stone  circles.'  They  probably  indicate  a  settled 
community. 

Not  merely  the  polyliths,  the  individual  stones  of 
which  sometimes  weighed  scores  of  tons  and  had  been 
transported  great  distances,  but  the  actual  superstructures, 
must  have  been  a  work  of  enormous  labour  under  the 
conditions  of  the  Neolithic  Age.  Thus  a  cairn  like 


'Crouching  burial,'  Adlerlxjrg, 
near  Worms. 


Menhir,  Carnac,  Brittany. 


FIG.  26.— Dolmen,  Haga,  Island  of  Korust.     (From  J.  M.  Tyler's 
New  Stone  Age  in  N.  Europe, ) 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN       165 

Silbury  Hill,  near  Marlborough,  covering  five  acres,  and 
with  a  height  which  must  once  have  exceeded  the  present 
weathered  vertical  height  of  130  feet,  could  not  be  raised 
over  every  hereditary  chief,  and  so  the  idea  of  the  '  family 
vault '  arose.  Further,  the  entrance  to  so  imposing  a 
burial-place  might  not  always  have  been  easily  recognis- 
able ;  accordingly  it  was  marked  by  a  menhir  or  monolith 
(block),  or  perhaps  by  two  of  them.  Those  menhirs 
stand  to-day  at  places  in  isolation — possibly  old  boundary 
marks — or  beside  dolmens,  when  they  were  probably 
associated  with  some  religious,  burial,  or  nature-worship 
cult,  or  yet  again  in  circles,  or  parallel  or  converging 
alignments.  Some  of  these  isolated  menhirs  are  of  im- 
mense size :  of  the  739  registered  in  Brittany,  the 
largest,  that  at  Locmariaquer  (Morbihan),  now  fallen  and 
broken,  was  67^  feet  high  and  weighed  347  tons.  Carnac, 
in  the  same  department,  is  representative  of  several 
adjacent  formations.  Here  the  alignments  consist  of 
ten  or  eleven  lines  of  menhirs,  of  which  1991  remain, 
extending  to  a  distance  of  more  than  one  mile.  In  some 
instances  they  lead  to  cromlechs,  and  it  is  difficult  to 
suppose  that  others  which  to-day  seem  to  lead  to  nothing, 
were  originally  of  this  purposeless  nature.  Comparison 
with  the  conditions  in  the  case  of  the  circular  arrange- 
ment at  Stonehenge  suggests  that  these  structures  were 
primarily  places  of  worship  and  assembly,  divorced  in 
some  instances  at  any  rate  from  the  chambered  tumulus, 
and  that  still  later,  places  of  burial  were  selected  near 
them.  These  climactic  developments  of  megalithic  in- 
dustry belong  to  the  Bronze  Age,  and  were  primarily 
connected  with  religion  and  worship.  In  the  Deccan  and 
other  parts  of  India,  such  menhirs  '  are  still  erected  either 
as  votive  offerings  or  as  monuments  to  the  dead,' l  quite 
apart  from  any  connection  with  actual  places  of  burial. 

We  have  seen  in  the  case  of  Palaeolithic  man,  that  while 
there  is  evidence  of  affection  for  the  dead,  there  is  also 
evidence  of  fear,  and  that  it  is  not  improbable  that  efforts 

1  Kuane,  of>.  cit.  p.  130. 


166     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

were  made  to  hamper  the  activity  of  the  spirit  which 
was  supposed  to  reside  within,  or  in  the  vicinity  of,  the 
body,  particularly,  we  may  assume,  if  the  individual  had 
not  commended  himself  in  life  to  those  with  whom  he 
lived.  On  the  other  hand,  local  leaders  must  have  arisen  in 
communities — older  men,  who  by  their  wisdom,  or  service 
of  their  fellows,  had  gained  their  respect,  if  not  their 
admiration,  and  whose  return  would  have  been  welcomed. 
In  some  such  atmosphere  we  may  suppose  ancestry 
worship,  or  the  cult  of  the  hero,  to  have  arisen.  There  is 
at  any  rate  no  doubt  in  the  Neolithic  mind  that  there  is  a 
spirit  world,  and  that  a  spirit  dwells  in  the  human  frame. 
Remarkable  witness  to  this  belief  is  found  in  the  evidence 
of  the  practice  of  trepanning.  Our  wonder  is  increased 
when  we  are  told  that  this  major  operation  of  exacting 
delicacy  under  the  best  of  modern  conditions  was  per- 
formed with  a  certain  amount  of  surgical  skill.  Appar- 
ently the  mode  of  operation  consisted  in  scraping  the 
skull  gradually  with  a  sharp  flint  flake  until  an  oval  per- 
foration was  made.  At  any  rate,  the  operation  is  still 
performed  in  this  way  by  the  natives  of  New  Ireland, 
one  of  the  islands  to  the  east  of  New  Guinea,  for  reasons 
that  have  not  been  adequately  investigated,  with  the 
aid  of  an  obsidian  flake  and  vegetable  bandages.1  That 
the  Neolithic  surgeon  had  proved  successful  on  many 
occasions  in  his  operation — about  the  diagnosis  we  can 
only  guess — is  proved  by  the  circumstance  that  the 
margins  of  the  incisions  had  healed  over.  It  is,  however, 
difficult  to  be  certain  as  to  the  purpose  of  the  mysterious 
performance.  It  may  be  that  even  at  this  early  date 
such  diseases  as  lunacy  and  epilepsy  were  attributed  to 
the  presence  of  evil  spirits  in  the  affected  subject,  and 
that  in  this  procedure  we  see  a  Neolithic  effort  at  re- 
demption. The  skull  was  opened  to  free  the  individual 
from  the  evil  spirit  to  which  he  was  in  bondage.  If  this 
were  the  case,  it  would  be  a  very  clear  indication  of 
Neolithic  belief  in  a  spiritual  world.  It  has,  however,  also 

1  Keith,  The  Antiquity  of  Man,  p.  20. 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN       167 

been  suggested  that  as  the  operation  was  most  frequently 
performed  on  the  young,  it  may  have  partaken  of  a  cere- 
monial character,  forming  part  of  a  rite  of  initiation  into 
some  sacred  caste  :  this,  however,  seems  less  probable. 

Late  in  the  Neolithic  Age,  when  the  character  of  the 
megalithic  structures  seems  to  be  more  definitely  asso- 
ciated with  worship,  the  practice  of  cremation  crept  in, 
and  gradually  spread  till,  in  the  Bronze  Age,  it  became  the 
rule,  and  inhumation  the  exception.  It  is  still  uncertain 
whether  burial  was  general  in  Neolithic  times,  so  corre- 
sponding, perhaps,  to  a  belief  in  the  immortality  of  all 
men.  The  evidence  suggests  that  in  some  regions  it  was 
selective, — a  distinction  accorded  only  to  the  great  ones 
of  the  tribe  and  their  families. 

The  religion  of  Neolithic  times  is  very  largely  a  de- 
velopment of  the  vague  conceptions  of  Palaeolithic  man. 
It  is  still  a  recognition  and  worship  of  Powers,  apparently 
unrestricted  in  their  numbers,  and  as  yet  only  occasionally 
conceived  in  anthropomorphic  guise.  The  Olympian 
hierarchy  was  a  much  later  development.  Nevertheless 
the  idea  of  spirit  has  already  become  more  definite  and 
real,  particularly  in  relation  to  man  himself.  Further, 
the  individual  member  of  a  Neolithic  settled  community, 
pastoral  and  agricultural  as  it  was,  based  on  a  scant  and 
superficial  acquaintance  with  the  routine  of  Nature,  and 
often  entirely  at  a  loss  to  understand  why  crops  had 
failed  or  herds  had  not  yielded  their  increase,  was  moved 
to  connect  the  failure  of  the  Powers  or  Spirits  that  in- 
formed these  processes  with  some  infraction  of  tabu,  or 
failure  or  shortcoming  in  himself.  There  was  no  other 
explanation  ;  they  could  not  all  be  malevolently  inten- 
tioned  towards  himself.  And  so  '  there  arises  an  indi- 
vidual feeling  of  pollution  and  of  the  need  of  expiation 
which  will  blaze  out  in  the  oldest  Greek  tragedies  as  almost 
a  veritable  sense  of  sin.'  1  In  an  atmosphere  such  as  this 
developed  the  pre-Homeric  mysteries  with  their  rites  of 
purification,  and  renovation  of  implements  and  materials. 

1  Tyler,  op.  cit.  p.  214. 


168     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

This  simple  and  yet  profound  religion  of  Neolithic  man 
very  easily  survived  the  temporary  development  of  the 
brilliant,  aesthetic,  superficial  Olympian  phase.  The 
latter  had  little  hold  on  Reality ;  it  had  lost  all  mysticism, 
and  was  largely  an  exaggerated  and  sublimated  reproduc- 
tion of  the  lives  of  a  hierarchy  of  earthly  chieftains.  The 
Neolithic  religion,  coarse  and  superstitious  as  it  doubtless 
was  in  many  of  its  phases,  yet  was  based  on  a  profound 
conviction  of  the  reality  of  a  spiritual  world  which  had 
direct  relationship  with  the  world  of  everyday  life,  and 
upon  the  understanding  of,  and  right  relationship  with 
which  depended  the  whole  of  life.  It  recognised  the 
possibility  of  the  forbidden  thing  ;  it  realised  the  need  for 
purification  ;  it  was  ringed  round  with  mystery. 

The  development  of  agriculture  and  of  stock-raising 
could  not  fail  to  exert  its  reflex  influence  on  Neolithic 
religion.  As  the  conception  of  the  invisible  Powers  be- 
came more  anthropomorphic,  the  old  cult  of  a  goddess  of 
fertility  spread  throughout  the  Neolithic  world — Isis  of 
the  Egyptians,  Artemis  of  the  Ephesians,  Astarte  of  the 
Phoenicians,  Demeter  of  the  Greeks.  Often  associated 
with  this  primary  cult  of  goddesses  are  traces  of  a  dominant 
matriarchy  or  mother  right — succession  reckoned  through 
the  female  line,  rights  of  inheritance  by  the  daughter,  in 
short  a  state  of  society  in  which  woman  really  held  the 
commanding  position.  It  is  not  difficult  to  see  how  this 
came  to  be  ;  for  while  primitive  man  was  engaged  on  his 
hunting  and  fishing  expeditions,  and  even  during  the 
succeeding  stage  when  he  was  developing  the  beginnings 
of  pastoral  life,  the  women  and  children  remained  in  and 
around  the  home.  And  it  is  most  probable  that  women 
took  the  first  steps  in  agriculture,  as  they  looked  for  the 
fruits  and  roots  and  seeds  that  were  amongst  the  early 
fare  of  man.  Possibly  noticing  how  seeds  that  had  been 
thrown  out  in  the  vicinity  of  the  settlement  or  by  some 
revisited  watering-place,  or  laid  as  a  food  offering  in  the 
upturned  soil  of  some  place  of  burial,  had  sprung  up,  they 
prosecuted,  by  making  holes  in  the  ground  with  digging 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN        169 

sticks,  and  later  with  hoes,  the  first  slow  and  laborious 
studies  in  tillage.  Cattle  ploughing,  which  came  in 
much  later,  is  man's  work.  Certainly,  also,  women  dis- 
covered and  developed  all  the  arts  of  the  home — spinning 
and  weaving  and  pottery,  and  probably  their  sick  children 
forced  them  to  be  the  first  herbalists  and  physicians. 

We  have  stated  that  like  Palaeolithic  man,  his  Neo- 
lithic successor  was  an  immigrant  so  far  as  Europe  is 
concerned.  If  the  tall  Sikh-like  Aurignacian  race  possibly 
came  by  way  of  Africa,  it  seems  probable  that  the  short- 
headed  '  Alpine '  race  of  Furfooz  and  Crenelle  came  by  the 
Central  European  route.  The  nursery  and  forcing-house 
of  these  cultures  we  have  laid,  following  Tyler,  in  the 
Iranian  plateau,  somewhere  to  the  westward  or  north- 
westward of  the  great  plateau  of  Thibet.  To  a  wave  like 
that  of  the  Hamitic-Semitic  peoples  moving  slowly  west- 
ward, Arabia  would  not  have  presented  the  same  diffi- 
culties as  to-day,  being,  as  was  also  the  Sahara,  a  well- 
watered  temperate  region  during  the  moist  climate  of 
the  glacial  episodes  farther  to  the  north  and  north-west : 
so  Arabia  held  the  Semites,  and  the  Hamites  spread  along 
the  southern  shores  of  the  Mediterranean.  At  a  slightly 
later  stage  we  may  think  of  another  migration  from  the 
eastern  centre  moving  up  the  valley  of  the  Euphrates  and 
along  the  rich  and  attractive  region  of  Asia  Minor,  and 
crossing  over  first  into  Greece  and  Crete,  and  later  to 
Italy.  These  formed  the  '  Mediterranean '  race.  Still  later 
a  third  route  was  followed  that  led  from  the  northern 
edge  of  the  Iranian  plateau,  and  swinging  to  the  north  of 
the  Caspian  and  Black  Seas  through  Southern  Siberia  and 
the  Russian  plain,  entered  the  valley  of  the  Danube  and 
so  reached  Central  and  Northern  Europe.  These  changes 
of  route  were  in  great  part  determined  by  the  changing 
physical  conditions  in  Arabia  as  the  climate  became 
warmer  and  drier. 

If  we  ask  for  the  reason  of  these  migrations,  the  answer 
will  probably  be  found  in  terms  of  environmental  change. 
As  the  result  of  the  long-continued  and  thorough  invest!- 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN        171 

gallons  conducted  by  Raphael  Pumpelly  and  his  co- 
workers  in  Turkestan,  it  is  possible  to  picture  to  ourselves 
the  progressive  desiccation  in  Central  Asia  throughout 
long  climatic  cycles  in  the  Later  Pleistocene,  which,  while 
it  permitted  of  local  civilisations  flourishing  in  the  favour- 
able extremes,  on  the  other  hand  compelled  radial  migra- 
tions during  the  arid  extremes,  which  thus  brought  to 
Europe  the  Aryan  peoples,  culture  and  language.  Evi- 
dence of  present-day  desiccation  can  be  seen  throughout 
the  whole  Aralo-Caspian  depression,  formerly  a  great 
inland  sea.  Pumpelly  attempts  to  show  l  that  '  Central 
Asia  was,  from  one  of  the  epochs  of  the  glacial  period 
onward,  isolated  from  Africa  and  Europe,  and  that, 
excepting  the  elements  of  the  lowest  generalised  form  of 
human  culture,  all  its  cultural  requirements  were  neces- 
sarily evolved  and  differentiated  within  the  region  of 
isolation.  Before  the  supposedly  Central-Asian  Sumerian 
fused  with  the  Semites  on  the  Euphrates  they  had  been 
trained  in  a  struggle  with  nature  which  had  culminated 
in  the  ability  to  conceive  and  execute  great  undertakings, 
as  shown  in  the  work  of  controlling  the  great  river.  Their 
field  of  thought  was  doubtless  confined  largely  to  economic 
effort  and  organisation.  Into  the  fusion,  the  contempla- 
tive nomadic  shepherd  Semites  brought  a  new  range  of 
speculative  thought,  and  out  of  the  union  arose  the 
highly  developed  Babylonian  civilisation.  And  to  the 
extent  that  this  entered  into  the  origins  of  pre-classic 
Aegean  and  Mycenean  cultures,  so  far  did  it  carry  the 
contribution  of  the  fundaments  of  civilisation  from  the 
Central- Asia  oases  to  the  Mediterranean.'  Pumpelly 
further  considers  that  '  the  earlier  reactions  of  the  oasis 
cultures  on  the  outside  world  were,  therefore,  both  as 
regards  migrations  and  ideas,  essentially  constructive  in 
character.  The  later  and  greater  migrations  were  of  a 
different  character.  The  growth  of  great  nomadic  popu- 
lations, to  whose  outward  movement  these  were  due, 
could  not  have  begun  until  after  the  development  of  the 

1  Explorations  in  Turkestan,  p.  xxxii. 


172     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

art  of  breeding  the  animals  upon  the  possession  of  which 
alone  life  on  the  arid  plains  of  Asia  depended.  .  .  . 
During  climatic  conditions  which  depopulated  the  oases 
the  grasses  of  the  arid  plains  would  permit  the  expansion 
and  differentiation  of  nomadic  shepherd  peoples  till  all 
Central  Asia  should  be  occupied,  and  later  there  came  a 
time  when — in  the  progressive  desiccation  through  an 
arid  extreme  of  a  climatic  cycle  and  some  thousands  of 
years  after  the  beginning  of  domestication  and  breeding 
of  animals — the  populations,  swollen  to  the  limit  of  the 
supporting  capacity  of  the  pasturage,  would  be  forced  to 
seek  outlets  into  more  favoured  regions.' 

The  tale  of  these  early  pioneers  is  preserved  in  the 
records  even  now  being  unearthed  in  the  settlements 
along  the  routes,  which  were  followed  possibly  by  a  hunt- 
ing vanguard,  then  by  a  succession  of  herdsmen,  and 
finally  by  the  agriculturalists,  who  settled  where  they 
found  conditions  to  their  liking.  It  was  a  process  of 
centuries.  Once  Europe  and  the  Danube  valley  were 
reached,  parties  would  continually  follow  the  river 
valleys,  settling  in  districts  as  the  local  conditions  favoured 
their  line  of  life.  Later  there  came  from  the  same  direc- 
tion still  other  movements  of  peoples  that  strengthened  the 
'  Alpine/  and  gave  rise  to  the  '  Nordic '  race.  The  latter 
became  the  tall,  blond,  light-haired,  blue-eyed  Scandi- 
navian people  that  were  German  and  Finn .  In  the  Danube 
region  the  country  was  mainly  settled  by  the  farming 
elements  in  one  of  the  later  migrations  from  the  east. 
All  of  these  movements,  some  of  which  began  in  the 
Mesolithic,  overlapped,  and  ultimately  reached  their  geo- 
graphical limits,  and  the  close  of  the  Neolithic  is  rather 
marked  by  the  peoples  from  Northern  Germany  drifting 
southward  again  towards  Central  and  Middle  Western 
Europe,  thus  involving  a  further  mixture  of  cultures. 

It  would  appear,  then,  that  the  real  interest  of  the 
question  of  origins  is  connected  with  Asia,  and  in  the  case 
of  this  Neolithic  culture  and  the  peoples  that  brought  it 
west,  we  must  look  with  expectancy  to  the  east.  One 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN       173 

stage  is  being  reconstructed  for  us  as  the  result  of  in- 
vestigations in  Babylonia.  If  clear  evidence  is  obtainable 
of  civilisation  of  the  Bronze  Age  at  Nippur  amid  conditions 
which  seem  to  justify  those  who  have  earned  the  right 
to  an  opinion  in  assigning  them  to  a  date  previous  to 
5000  B.C.,  it  is  apparent  that  we  have  to  go  farther  back 
in  time,  and  probably  farther  east,  to  find  the  origin  of 
that  Neolithic  civilisation  that  overflowed  in  its  maturity 
into  Europe.  A  connecting  link  in  the  search  is  supplied 
by  Pumpelly's  investigations  on  the  ruins  of  Anau  near 
Askabad,  in  the  southern  steppe  region  of  Trans-Caspia. 
Here  excavation  of  an  enormous  kurgan  or  mound  dis- 
closed the  existence  of  a  community,  dating  from  8000 
B.C.,  that  lived  in  rectangular  houses  of  sun-dried  bricks, 
and  had  a  highly  developed  skill  in  pottery,  practised 
weaving  and  cultivated  cereals.  The  culture  is  very 
similar  to  that  of  the  Swiss  lake-dwellers,  only  immensely 
older,  so  much  so  that  we  get  one  or  two  glimpses  of  some 
beginnings.  Thus  through  forty-five  feet  of  these  com- 
pact strata,  it  was  found  possible  to  trace  and  date 
approximately  the  gradual  success  in  the  domestication 
of,  or  introduction  of  yet  previously  domesticated,  animals 
beginning  with  the  Asiatic  variety  of  the  urus  (Bos 
primigenius).  Following  this  are  such  forms  as  the 
'  turbary '  pig,  '  turbary '  sheep,  and  camel.  Of  these 
there  had,  however,  certainly  been  a  previous  history 
of  domestication  in  the  case  of  the  urus,  sheep,  and 
pig,  which  are  not  steppe  forms.  The  camel  is  found 
approximately  after  6000  B.C.,  and  long  antedated  the 
horse  as  a  domesticated  form.  The  investigations  are 
interesting  in  numerous  ways,  showing  that  the  agri- 
cultural stage,  at  any  rate  in  this  region,  preceded  the 
domestication  of  animals  and  the  nomadic  shepherd  stage 
of  civilisation,  and  that  before  the  domestication  of 
animals,  mankind  in  Central  Asia  was  sharply  divided 
into  settled  agriculturalists  on  the  oases,  and  hunters 
wandering  within  a  limited  range. 

A  further  stage  is  supplied  as  the  result  of  the  exca- 


174     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

vations  by  de  Morgan  at  Susa,  130  miles  due  north  of  the 
head  of  the  Persian  Gulf.  Here  continuity  is  preserved 
through  a  depth  of  about  40  metres  of  mound  deposits, 
the  original  natural  surface — that  of  the  earliest  settle- 
ment— being  about  6  metres  below  the  present-day  sur- 
face. These  earliest  deposits,  Neolithic  in  every  respect, 
have  been  estimated  by  de  Morgan  and  Montelius  to  be 
18,000  years  old.  Roughly  this  would  correspond  to  the 
Magdalenian  in  Europe.  The  distinctive  pottery  links 
the  site  in  a  general  way  with  Anau  and  other  stations, 
and  suggests  that  at  a  very  early  date  Western  Asia  was 
a  region  characterised  by  a  considerable  number  of 
settled  communities. 

It  is  easy  to  make  mistaken  generalisations,  particu- 
larly where  the  data  are  meagre,  but  such  evidence  as 
there  is  seems  to  mark  out  the  Neolithic  Age  as  distinc- 
tively an  Age  of  Peace.  Life  in  such  crowded  com- 
munities as  the  Swiss  lake-dwellings  must  have  been 
endurable  only  on  some  system  of  co-operation  and 
forbearance.  The  conditions  do  not  suggest  any  very 
serious  economic  difficulties.  Between  their  domesti- 
cated animals,  the  waters  of  the  lake,  the  fruits  of  tillage, 
and  the  forest  chase,  these  lake-dwellers  cannot  often 
have  been  in  want.  They  had  great  possibilities  of  com- 
munication with  other  settlements  on  the  lake  shore,  and 
were  not  so  remote  from  other  centres  of  population. 
There  is  no  evidence  of  hostile  invasions  under  pressure 
of  a  desire  for  food  or  conquest :  indeed,  weapons  other 
than  those  of  the  chase  form  a  very  small  proportion  of 
Neolithic  remains.  The  general  impression  of  Neolithic 
life  everywhere  is  very  much  that  of  the  lake-dwellings  in 
summer — activity,  but  peace. 

Further,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  in  this  period 
of  pastoral  and  agricultural  settlements,  which  seem  to 
give  little  evidence  of  any  highly  developed  political 
organisation,  the  connecting  link  of  the  community  was 
religion.  Neolithic  man  believed  in  a  spiritual  world, 
believed  also  that  he  could  assist  the  beneficent  Powers 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN       175 

and  work  together  with  them  for  his  own  material  good. 
It  was  a  period  when,  undisturbed,  he  was  able  to  put 
his  childlike  questions  to  Nature,  make  simple  experi- 
ments, and  strive  to  find  the  relations  between  things. 
It  was  an  age  of  sheer  physical  robustness,  and  yet  of  a 
strange  and  deep  tenderness — witness  the  Anau  mothers 
who  buried  their  dead  children,  and  their  children  only, 
under  the  earthen  floors  of  their  houses,  refusing  to  let  them 
be  banished  from  the  home ;  or  the  Neolithic  Irish  mothers, 
who  sometimes  buried  a  dog  along  with  their  children,  as 
indeed  North  American  Indian  tribes  do  to  this  day, 
so  that  the  child  should  have  a  guide  in  the  unfamiliar 
realm  of  spirits  who  would  always  know  the  way  home. 
Towards  the  close  of  the  Neolithic  Age,  however,  when 
the  peoples  of  Northern  Germany  began  to  crowd  back 
and  in  upon  those  of  Central  Europe,  there  begins  to  be 
evidence  of  fortified  villages,  particularly  when  there 
was  something  to  defend,  be  it  a  salt  mine  or  a  flint 
factory.  Doubtless  the  minglings  and  readjustments 
and  reactions  did  not  take  place  without  some  dis- 
turbances, but  out  of  them  came  the  beginnings  of  a 
new  Age. 

The  Neolithic  Age,  thus  briefly  described  and  sum- 
marised, is  a  period  of  which  more  detailed  examination 
would  reveal  a  developmental  process  at  work  in  all  its 
aspects  and  elements  :  at  the  same  time  there  is  much 
overlapping,  and  different  regions  are  at  different  stages. 
This  development  can,  however,  be  clearly  discerned,  for 
example,  in  the  records  of  the  Swiss  lake-dwellings. 
Thus  an  initial  stage  is  noticeable  in  which  the  axe-heads 
were  on  the  whole  small,  the  workmanship  upon  horn 
and  bone  implements  rude,  the  pottery  coarse  and  with- 
out decoration,  and  sources  of  supplies  for  the  greater 
part  sought  in  the  chase.  The  middle  of  the  Neolithic 
is  marked  by  a  growth  in  size  of  implements  and  a  finer 
finish  in  their  workmanship,  and  efficiency  in  construction. 
The  pottery  is  better  made  and  shows  traces  of  ornament. 
Remains  of  domesticated  and  of  wild  animals  occur  in 


176     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

about  equal  proportions.  The  Late  Neolithic  is  char- 
acterised by  beautifully  finished  '  hammer-axes  '  some- 
what like  a  light  stonemason's  hammer,  often  with  one 
cutting  and  one  blunt  end,  and  with  the  handle  driven 
through  the  head.  A  development  of  horn  and  bone 
implements  continues,  pottery  is  still  more  artistic,  and 
remains  of  domesticated  animals  are  greatly  in  excess  of 
those  that  were  taken  in  the  chase.  The  sheep  now 
occurs  in  greater  numbers  than  the  goat.  But  the 
gradual  introduction  of  copper  made  less  demand  on 
minerals  like  nephrite  whether  for  ornaments,  weapons, 
or  other  implements. 

Thus  gradually  the  Neolithic  Age  in  Europe  passed 
about  2000  B.C.  into  what  is  sometimes  separately  desig- 
nated as  the  Copper  Age, — a  phase  which  had  already 
commenced  in  Western  Asia  some  three  thousand  years 
previously.  This  metal  probably  '  entered  south-eastern 
Europe  by  way  of  Troy,  or  northward  from  Greece  through 
the  Balkan  Peninsula  to  the  Danube  valley.'  l  It  proved 
attractive  for  ornaments — armlets  and  bracelets — and  for 
smaller  piercing  and  cutting  implements.  But  the  edge 
of  a  copper  axe  did  not  hold,  and  the  designation  of  an 
Age  is  hardly  justified,  at  any  rate  in  Europe,  for  a  sub- 
stance which  was  most  commonly  used  for  articles  that 
were  on  the  whole  more  in  the  nature  of  luxuries.  Some 
unknown  genius  once  noticed  that  when  the  ore  contained 
certain  impurities  the  alloy  was  harder.  Still  there  must 
have  been  considerable  experimenting  before  the  virtues 
of  a  mixture  of  ninety  per  cent,  of  copper  and  ten  per 
cent,  of  tin  were  discovered.  But  from  that  discovery, 
wherever  made,  unheralded  and  unlaureated,  the  Bronze 
Age  dates.  To  this  there  succeeded  the  Iron  Age. 
Thereafter  we  reach  the  Historic  Era,  the  age  of  written 
records,  of  literature,  of  the  fine  arts  and  modern  culture 
generally.  It  is  connected  by  quite  definite  traditions 
with  the  previous  Age.  So  Hesiod  tells  of  times  when 
'  their  armour  was  of  bronze,  and  their  houses  of  bronze, 

1  Tyler,  op.  cit.  p.  140. 


MESOLITHIC  AND  NEOLITHIC  MAN       177 

and   of   bronze  were  their  implements  :   there  was  no 
black  iron.'  1 

A  final  word  may  be  added  with  regard  to  that  latest 
astonishing  development  of  Asiatic  Neolithic  life  and 
culture  which  swept  westward,  carried  by  the  Indo- 
European  or  Aryan  people,  and  expressed  in  part  through 
the  medium  of  a  language  which  underwent  development 
into  various  Indian  and  Iranian  (Persian)  branches  on  the 
one  hand,  and  on  the  other  into  Greek,  Latin,  Slav,  and 
other  tongues  in  Europe.  It  came  in  amongst  other 
languages,  and  eventually  conquered.  These  migrations 
apparently  began  about  2000  B.C.  Tyler z  quotes 
E.  Meyer  as  stating  that  the  '  horse-taming '  Achaeans 
had  already  arrived  in  the  Southern  Balkans  from 
Hungary — originally  from  farther  east  by  the  third  or 
northern  route  3 — by  that  date,  and  that  they  reached 
Greece  about  1300  or  1200  B.C.  They  came  in  successive 
waves,  followed  by  Dorians  and  then  by  Thracians. 
Their  social  organisation  was  based  on  the  clan  system, 
each  with  its  leader.  They  were  an  inflow  of  rough, 
boisterous,  full-blooded  barbarians,  who,  although  cer- 
tainly less  numerous,  rather  upset  for  the  time  being  the 
prosperous  and  staid  old  Pelasgic  agricultural  and  pastoral 
population.  Their  virility  and  energy  made  them  domi- 
nant, and  for  the  first  time  in  history  we  are  really  aware 
of  individual  leadership  and  personality  beginning  to 
emerge  from  the  tribal  group.  National  feeling  did  not 
exist  amongst  the  Neolithic  (Grecian)  Pelasgi,  and  so 
there  was  no  real  resistance  to  the  invaders.  These 
peasant  people  had  lived  simple  prosperous  lives,  acting 
together,  and  desiring  very  much  to  be  left  alone.  These 
Indo-Europeans — Achaeans  and  ancient  Celts,  from 
whom  in  the  latter  case  it  is  not  impossible  that  the 
Germans  received  both  language  and  customs — probably 
came,  although  few  questions  are  more  disputable,  from  a 

1  Works  and  Days,  lines  150-151  (Trans.  H.  G.  Evelyn-White,  Loeb 
Classics). 

»  Op.  cit.  p.  253.  •  Cf.  p.  169. 

M 


178     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

region  in  what  is  to-day  southern  or  south-eastern  Russia 
toward  the  Caspian.  Probably  they  also  moved  out,  as 
in  so  many  other  instances,  under  the  influence  of  climatic 
changes. 

Until  towards  the  close  of  the  Neolithic,  tribal  con- 
siderations were  pre-eminent ;  the  individual  had  hardly 
begun  to  exist.  Education,  religion,  responsibility  were 
tribal,  with  promulgations  and  decisions  largely  in  the 
hands  of  a  body  of  elders  of  the  tribe,  a  sort  of  Council  of 
Seniors.  Land  also  was  mainly  common  property : 
religious  ritual  was  a  service  of  the  community  as  a  whole. 
The  gods  and  goddesses  were  local,  very  numerous,  no 
one  supreme,  though  some,  as  e.g.  the  goddess  of  fertility, 
were  much  more  important  than  others.  Some  were 
gradually  losing  their  importance,  and  becoming  a  part 
of  folklore  rather  than  of  full-blooded  life.  But  with 
the  leaders  of  the  Bronze  Age,  the  '  Age  of  Heroes,'  there 
began  to  be  the  possibility  of  nations — aggregates,  that 
is  to  say,  on  a  larger  scale  than  the  tribe.  It  was  an  age 
of  hierarchies  on  Olympus  and  on  the  earth,  but  only 
for  a  season  :  the  fundamental  basal  recognitions  of 
Neolithic  life  came  into  their  own  again,  purified  and 
intensified.  Likewise,  as  almost  always,  both  Celt  and 
Achaean  were  ultimately  absorbed  by  the  people  whom 
they  had  overcome. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   PLACE  AND   FUNCTION   OF  NATIONALITY 

FEW  conceptions  have  come  into  renewed  prominence 
within  the  last  decade  of  which  the  elusiveness  in  defini- 
tion is  greater  than  that  of  Nationality.  Dictionary 
references  to  qualities,  or  '  that  complex  of  qualities  in  a 
group  of  persons  which  combine  them  in  a  nation,'  still 
leave  unsolved  the  vital  issue — What  is  a  nation  ?  In 
some  respects  it  is  easier  to  say  what  a  nation  is  not. 
Thus,  to  begin  with,  a  nation  is  not  necessarily  a  race. 
It  may  include  one  or  more  races,  and  conversely  any 
given  race  may  find  its  members  divided  into  more  than 
one  nation,  and  even  combined  in  national  unity  with 
members  of  another  race.  In  nation  and  race  we  are 
dealing  with  two  actualities,  one  of  which  is  in  a  sense 
more  ultimate  than  the  other,  for  while  a  race  is  con- 
ceivable that  is  not  yet  a  nation,  no  nation  is  conceivable 
that  is  not  composed  of  a  constituent  race  or  races. 
Nationality,  that  is  to  say,  is  a  later  development  than 
race.  It  is  a  state  of  mind,  a  consciousness,  an  acqui- 
escence, a  conviction.  It  is  something,  moreover,  that 
the  individual  can  change,  which  is  not  the  case  with 
race  ;  a  man  cannot  change  his  parents  or  his  ancestors. 
At  the  same  time  there  are  many  indications  tending  to 
show  that,  ultimate  as  it  may  appear  to  be,  race  plays 
no  part  comparable  to  that  of  ideas  or  culture  as  a  deter- 
mining factor  in  the  world's  progress.  Further,  and 
more  important,  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  racial  purity 
exists  anywhere  in  the  world  to-day.  For  example,  a 
recent  important  discussion l  made  it  clear  that,  whatever 
>  The  Origin  of  the  Scottish  People,  B.  A.  Report,  1922,  p.  439. 

179 


i8o     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  constituent  elements,  the  Scottish  people  were  in  no 
ethnographic  sense  a  pure  race.  According  to  Sir  Arthur 
Keith,  it  is  '  certain '  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  High- 
lands and  western  parts  of  Scotland  and  of  the  inland 
parts  of  Scandinavia  are  traceable  to  the  same  racial 
(Nordic)  stock — descendants  of  a  Mesolithic  stock  in 
South-West  Europe.  At  the  time  of  this  dispersal, 
which  followed  the  emergence  of  Scotland  and  Scan- 
dinavia from  the  ice,  '  the  North  Sea  was  an  estuary 
or  bay,  open  to  the  north,  with  a  western  shore  leading 
up  to  Scotland  ;  an  eastern  leading  to  Scandinavia.' 1 
Much  later,  in  the  second  millennium  B.C.,  Scotland  also 
felt  the  influence  of  the  Celtic  round-headed  invasion 
that  had  filtered  into  Europe  from  the  east  during  the 
preceding  millennia.  Again  in  the  fifth  century  A.D., 
Dalriad  Scots,  of  the  same  physical  type  as  those  who 
had  originally  settled  in  Scotland,  entered  that  country 
from  Ireland,  while  the  East  Coast  was  always  open  to 
immigrants  from  across  the  North  Sea.  Professor  Bryce 
considers  that  a  third  distinct  element,  representative 
of  the  Mediterranean  Megalithic  race,  is  recognisable 
in  the  Scottish  pre-Roman  population,  and  it  is  matter 
of  common  observation  that  there  is  greater  mental  and 
physical  community  between  the  Lowland  Scot  and  the 
men  of  Northumbria,  than  between  the  former  and  the 
Highland  Scot.  Scotland,  whose  people  have  very 
marked  mental  and  moral  characteristics,  is  far  from 
being  a  racial  unit,2  and  an  interesting  inquiry  might 
throw  much  light  on  the  way  in  which  the  Lowlanders 
usurped  for  themselves  and  their  tongue  the  designation 
'  Scottish  '  which  previously  belonged  to  the  Highlanders 
and  Gaelic-speaking  elements. 

Again,  whatever  degree  of  racial  purity  exists  to-day, 
it  appears  to  be  the  case  that  with  the  inevitable  shrinkage 

1  op.  dt.  p.  439. 

*  '  Even  into  the  fifteenth  century  Galloway  was  governed  by  laws 
of  its  own,  and  till  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  it  clung  to 
the  Celtic  language,  which  it  had  inherited  from  before  the  days  of 
St.  Columba.' — (P.  Hume  Brown,  Surveys  of  Scottish  History,  p.  21.) 


PLACE  AND  FUNCTION  OF  NATIONALITY    181 

in  the  world's  circumference  as  the  result  of  modern 
methods  of  transport,  intermingling  of  races  is  going  on 
to  a  degree  before  which  all  artificial  barriers  are  breaking 
down.  Professor  Conklin  draws  attention  to  the  fact  that 
in  the  United  States  '  one-quarter  of  all  persons  of  African 
descent  contain  more  or  less  white  blood ;  there  are 
about  eight  million  full-blooded  negroes  and  two  million 
mulattoes,  and  during  the  past  twenty  years  the  latter 
have  increased  at  twice  the  rate  of  the  former.' l  The 
same  thing  occurs  hi  every  country  where  different  races 
live  together ;  even  the  Jews,  who  from  all  time  have 
prided  themselves  upon  the  purity  of  their  descent,  are 
becoming  increasingly  a  mixed  population,  while  the  term 
'  Anglo-Indian '  now  officially  replaces  the  older  word 
'  Eurasian '  in  connection  with  the  process  of  hybridisa- 
tion, which  is  said  to  be  increasing  rather  than  decreasing 
in  India  to-day.  As  is  well  known  from  examples  in 
lower  forms  of  life,  it  by  no  means  follows  that  such 
hybrid  races  are  necessarily  always  inferior  to  the  supposed 
pure  stocks.  Probably  a  great  part  of  the  reason  for 
believing  the  contrary  is  the  fact  that  people  pay  more 
for  pedigreed  freaks,  say  in  the  case  of  dogs,  than  they 
are  willing  to  do  for  what  they  choose  to  call  mongrels. 
Yet  none  of  these  unnatural  forms,  from  dachshund  to 
Pekingese,  would  survive  apart  from  man's  special  care 
of  them,  being  singularly  ill-equipped  for  life  on  the 
canine  plane  of  things.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however, 
few  races  of  living  beings  are  more  mongrel  than  that  of 
mankind  to-day.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  race  is  pure,  and 
indeed  there  is  little  to  suggest  the  superiority  of  a  pure 
human  race  over  a  mixed  one,  even  if  we  could  be  sure 
of  having  the  former.  In  a  remarkable  book  on  The 
Biology  of  War,2  Professor  Nicolai  of  Berlin  ventured 
at  one  point  to  expose  some  of  the  pretensions  of  his 
pan-Germanist  fellow-countrymen  so  far  as  they  were 
based  on  the  supposed  racial  purity  of  the  German 

1  Heredity  and  Environment  in  the  Development  of  Men,  p.  417. 
•  Published  during  the  War,  1916  :   English  trans.  1919. 


182     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

people.  He  began  by  quoting  a  popular  old  German 
ballad  : 

'  Es  wohnten  die  alten  Germanen 
Zu  beiden  Seiten  des  Rheins ' ;  * 

and  then  continued,  following  more  exact  sources, 
'  Racially  Ariovistus  [the  local  chief]  was  not  a  Teuton, 
but  a  Celt ;  and  if  anyone  then  lived  on  both  sides  of 
the  Rhine,  it  was  the  Celts.  Tacitus,  however,  called 
these  tribes  Germani,  a  name  afterwards  applied  to  those 
tribes  which  invaded  the  then  civilised  world,  coming 
from  the  parts  where  Ariovistus  had  lived.  These  tribes 
were  the  Eastern  Goths,  the  Western  Goths,  the  Vandals 
and  others.  From  this  period  dates  the  confusion,  for 
the  Germani  of  Tacitus  and  those  of  the  migration  period 
are  wholly  distinct.  Thus  for  a  long  while  no  one  really 
knew  what  Germani  [Teutons}  were  ;  and  even  in  the 
I2th  and  I3th  centuries  there  was  an  inclination  to 
apply  this  name  rather  to  the  French.'  Nicolai  added 
that  the  term  '  Teutonic '  was  applied  rightly  to  a  people  of 
unknown  origin  which  is  now  so  much  blended  with  other 
peoples  as  no  longer  to  exist,  at  any  rate  in  Germany,2 
and  that  Germany  is  a  racial  medley  which  as  a  civilised 
State  has  grown  up  on  the  basis  of  community  of 
language,  and  not  a  national  State  based  on  community 
of  race. 

Again,  a  nation  is  not  necessarily  a  group  of  people 
speaking  the  same  language.  Nations  sometimes  appear 
to  be  fairly  distinct  entities  because  the  people  composing 
them  speak  one  and  the  same  definite  language.  Yet 
language  is  no  very  sound  criterion  of  nations,  as  a  refer- 
ence to  the  case  of  Switzerland  immediately  shows.  For 
there  is  a  country  without  natural  boundaries,  a  creation 
of  history,  dating  from  1815  only  as  a  distinct  '  land.' 

1  '  Once  there  lived  the  ancient  Teutons,  On  both  sides  of  the  Rhine. 
The  reference  is  to  p.  257. 

*  He  thinks  with  \Vilser  (Rassen  und  Volker]  that '  if  to-day  we  would 
discover  true  Teutons,  we  must  go  to  our  northern  sister  nations — to 
Sweden,  the  Netherlands,  and  England  '  (p.  256). 


PLACE  AND  FUNCTION  OF  NATIONALITY    183 

There  is  no  Swiss  people  properly  so-called,  but  there  are 
certain  German,  French,  Italian,  and  Romansch-speaking 
elements  that  became  united  in  a  struggle  for  liberty 
against  the  Hapsburgs.  In  a  measure,  a  corresponding 
account  could  be  given  of  Belgium,  composed  of  Flemish 
and  French-speaking  elements.  Further,  we  know  that 
peoples  can  adopt  a  new  tongue  in  a  very  short  time. 
Thus  the  Bulgarians,  originally  a  Finno-Tartar  horde 
from  the  Volga,  entirely  failed  to  maintain  their  ethnical 
independence,  and  assimilated  Slav  civilisation  and  speech 
so  thoroughly  as  to  forget  entirely  their  mother  Finno- 
Turki  speech.  At  the  same  time,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
language  has  been  and  is  a  great  force  both  in  nation- 
building  and  in  maintaining  national  feeling  amongst 
minorities  in  times  of  oppression.  There  is  no  other 
explanation  of  the  attempts  of  the  Russian  Government 
in  the  past  to  suppress  the  Esthonian,  Latvian,  and 
Lithuanian  languages,  nor  of  the  former  German  efforts 
to  suppress  Polish  in  Posen  and  Danish  in  Slesvig.  In 
the  absence  of  other  tests,  language  is  usually  regarded 
as  a  leading,  if  not  the  principal,  test  and  symbol  of 
nationality. 

What,  then,  is  Nationality,  and  what  its  place  and 
function  ?  Addressing  the  Congress  of  Philosophy  at 
Oxford  in  October  1920,  the  Earl  of  Balfour  said  that 
'  nationality  was  one  of  the  methods  which  in  the  gradual 
evolution  of  civilisation  humanity  had  found  for  doing 
that  which  it  was  absolutely  necessary  for  humanity  to 
do — to  act  in  some  corporate  capacity.  We  were  not  all 
separate  individuals,'  he  continued,  '  but  necessarily 
members  of  a  society,  and  the  difficulty  was  how  to  con- 
stitute the  society.  The  clan  system,  the  city  system, 
the  feudal  system,  and  various  imperial  systems  had  been 
prevalent  with  more  or  less  advantage  to  humanity  in 
different  parts  of  the  world  at  different  ages.  The  prin- 
ciple of  nationality  in  its  present  full  sense,  and  to  its 
present  extent,  was  rather  a  late  growth.'  This  concep- 
tion of  nationality  as  essentially  a  means  to  an  end  was 


184     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

'  the  plain  common-sense  view  '  in  the  speaker's  opinion  ; 
as  such,  as  he  remarked,  it  is  a  comparatively  recent 
development  in  Europe.  Indeed,  the  word  nation  has 
actually  changed  its  etymological  meaning  with  this 
development  in  the  actual  objective  reality.  Originally 
the  word  nation  signified  a  race  (i.e.  tribe)  and  was  applied 
to  any  people — especially  those  who  were  distant  or 
barbarous — who  lived  in  a  country.  In  the  course  of 
history  the  word  came  to  be  applied  to  any  organised 
group  of  people,  and  now  to  its  more  precise  but  even 
yet  vaguely  grasped  meaning,  for  it  is  not  always  easy 
to  say  just  what  size  of  a  group  has  a  right  to  call  itself 
a  nation  or  has  attained  nationhood,  or  to  indicate  the 
principles  that  should  be  recognised  in  the  formation  of 
an  independent  self-governing  unit. 

Ancient  history,1  then,  shows  nothing  comparable  to 
this  modern  conception  of  a  nation.  It  knew  of  city 
states,  and,  later,  aggregates  of  Empires  like  that  of 
Persia.  The  forty-six  '  nations '  that  marched  with 
Xerxes  against  the  Greeks  were  for  the  most  part  little 
more  than  wild  tribes  with  very  varying  degrees  of 
military  equipment  and  social  laws.  The  period  covered 
by  the  Roman  Empire  meant  definite  retardation  of 
national  isolation.  The  dominant  ideals  of  the  Middle 
Ages — the  Feudal  System  and  Chivalry — had  nothing 
national  in  them,  as  we  understand  that  word.  They 
represented  a  horizontal  stratification  of  humanity  in 
certain  military  and  religious  aggregates  of  these  times. 
The  Holy  Roman  Empire,  in  theory  a  continuance  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  but  influenced  by  the  unity  of  the 
Church,  was  deliberately  opposed  to  national  or  vertical 
subdivision.  In  protest  against  this  falsely  conceived 
supra-nationalism  of  the  Roman  Empire,  true  nationalism 
first  crystallised  out  in  France  and  England,  in  the  later 
part  of  the  Middle  Ages.  In  Scotland,  also,  impulses 

1  For  many  of  the  facts  in  the  immediately  following  paragraphs 
the  writer  would  acknowledge  his  indebtedness  to  Sir  Richard 
Lodge. 


PLACE  AND  FUNCTION  OF  NATIONALITY    185 

towards  nationhood  developed,  which  were  largely  the 
result  of  the  War  of  Independence. 

The  period  of  the  Reformation,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
potent  in  national  development.  Initially  directed 
against  abuses  in  a  non-national  Church,  this  religious 
movement  could  not  fail  to  be  influenced  by  the  special 
political  circumstances  of  the  time.  The  Papal  residence 
in  Avignon  (1309-1378),  followed  by  the  Great  Schism 
(1378-1416),  were  very  influential  in  combining  opposition 
to  the  Papacy  and  its  abuses  with  national  sentiment. 
Luther's  imperative  demands  for  reform  synchronised 
with — perhaps  were  a  partial  expression  of — a  general 
desire  for  a  break-up  of  the  political  unity  that  had  for 
centuries  accompanied  the  superficial  religious  unity  of 
Europe.  Accordingly,  with  the  exception  of  France, 
nationality  developed  more  quickly  in  the  Protestant 
countries  of  Europe.  Roman  Catholic  France  became 
indeed  as  completely  a  national  State  as  England,  yet  it 
is  interesting  to  realise  by  how  very  little  France  missed 
becoming  a  Protestant  State,  for  the  connection  of  Pro- 
testantism with  nationality  was  very  strong  even  there. 
Sir  Richard  Lodge  has  expressed  the  opinion  that  if  the 
French  Protestant  leaders  had  been  abler  and  more 
prudent  statesmen,  France  would  have  become  a  leading 
Protestant  State.  Unfortunately  the  Huguenots  identi- 
fied themselves  with  the  interests'of  the  classes  and  towns, 
and  the  maintenance  of  the  feudal  system,  and  the 
Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew  was  the  result  of  a  fear  that 
they  constituted  a  danger  to  the  political  unity  and 
security  of  France. 

In  Germany,  where  the  Reformation  was  only  partially 
successful,  it  militated  against  national  unity,  but  it 
certainly  aided  in  the  unification  of  the  separate  States, 
and  in  furnishing  them  with  a  strength  and  cohesion  which 
they  had  not  previously  known.  In  Holland,  Sweden, 
and  Denmark,  Protestantism  reinforced  national  feeling. 
In  other  European  countries  there  was  no  real  develop- 
ment in  a  national  direction  until  after  the  French 


186     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Revolution.  Thus  Spain  was  for  long  merely  a  bundle 
of  foreign  provincial  states — more  of  a  geographical 
expression  than  a  nation.  .But  later,  when  France  in  the 
strength  of  her  developed  nationhood  had  thrown  back 
the  foreign  invaders,  and  become  in  turn  the  aggressor, 
she  thereby  excited  in  Spain  and  the  other  countries  which 
she  overran  that  very  spirit  of  nationality  in  virtue  of 
which  she  had  gained  her  initial  easy  triumphs.  From 
that  moment  the  defeat  of  France  was  certain.  '  Napoleon 
who,  trusting  to  his  armies,  despised  moral  forces  in 
politics,  was  overthrown  by  their  rising.' l 

The  remarkable  thing,  however,  is  that  at  the  Congress 
of  Vienna  (1815)  which  followed  on  the  defeat  of  Napoleon, 
Nationality,  the  rock  on  which  his  ambitions  foundered, 
did  not  triumph.  A  fatal  return  was  made  to  that  non- 
national  conception  of  Europe  which  had  been  the  cause 
of  prolonged  disturbance  in  the  past,  and  the  result  was 
that  the  nineteenth  century  was  a  period  of  gradually 
increasing,  and  more  and  more  explosive,  hostility  to  this 
non-national  settlement.  In  fact  during  the  nineteenth 
century  nationality  came  to  be  the  most  active  and  basic 
force  in  Europe.  At  first  it  was  held  in  check  and  its 
successes  were  spasmodic.  It  was  identified  in  its  early 
stages  with  the  growth  of  Liberalism,  and  in  Great 
Britain  no  one  fell  more  completely  under  the  appeal  of 
the  ideal  than  Mr.  Gladstone.  Supporting  his  motion  in 
the  House  of  Commons  in  1859  f°r  the  uniting  of  Moldavia 
and  Wallachia  as  a  Roumanian  nation,  he  said,  '  Surely 
the  best  resistance  to  be  offered  to  Russia  is  by  the 
strength  and  freedom  of  those  countries  that  will  have 
to  resist  her.  You  want  to  place  a  living  barrier  between 
Russia  and  Turkey.  There  is  no  barrier  like  the  breast  of 
freemen.'  2  Nationality  was,  in  short,  taking  the  form 
of  a  demand  for  the  abolition  of  the  artificial  divisions 
and  unions  created  by  Vienna,  e.g.  the  unions  of  Holland 

1  Lord  Acton,  Essay  on  '  Nationality  '  in  The  History  of  Freedom,  and 
other  Essays,  p.  285. 

*  Morley's  Life  of  Gladstone,  vol.  ii.  pp.  3  and  4  (italics  as  in  original). 


PLACE  AND  FUNCTION  OF  NATIONALITY    187 

and  Belgium,  of  Sweden  and  Norway.  But  especially 
was  attention  directed  to  the  demand  for  unity  by  the 
two  great  peoples  who  had  hitherto  failed  to  attain 
national  unity,  viz.  Germany  and  Italy. 

The  third  quarter  of  the  igth  century  will  always  stand 
out  as  a  period  in  which  Nationality  gained  three  notable 
triumphs  which  finally  made  it  the  outstanding  and 
invincible  political  force  of  that  age.  '  At  the  present 
day,'  said  Lord  Acton,  writing  in  1862,  '  the  theory  of 
nationality  is  not  only  the  most  powerful  auxiliary  of 
revolution,  but  its  actual  substance  in  the  movements 
of  the  last  three  years.  ...  A  great  democracy  must 
either  sacrifice  self-government  to  unity,  or  preserve 
it  by  federation.' l  In  Italy,  so  long  associated  with  the 
ideals  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  a  memorable 
movement  arose  for  freedom  from  the  foreigner  and  unity 
amongst  the  component  States  themselves.  There  was 
manifest  sympathy  throughout  Europe  with  Italy  in  the 
attempt  to  throw  off  the  Austrian  yoke,  but  the  general 
impression  was  that  the  union  would  be  of  a  federal  type. 
Yet  Mazzini  boldly  proclaimed  the  principle  of  Nation- 
ality, and  nationality  won.  Where  nationality  exists, 
he  had  said,  there  is  an  inherent  right  to  independence. 
The  same  result  was  secured  in  the  unification  of  Germany, 
although  by  different  means  and  principles  :  here  Feudal- 
ism had  hitherto  supplied  the  binding  element  in  society 
that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  had  provided  in  Italy. 
But  Feudalism  was  a  federal  link  rather  than  a  unifying 
bond,  and  in  all  the  early  national  States  the  destruction 
of  Feudalism  was  an  essential  part  of  their  growth. 
Once  again,  across  the  seas,  a  struggle  was  being  waged 
on  the  North  American  Continent  which,  although  super- 
ficially and  sentimentally  associated  with  the  economic 
and  humanitarian  question  of  the  abolition  of  slavery, 
was  really  primarily  concerned  with  the  fundamental 
issue  of  the  right  of  any  of  the  component  States  to 
secede  and  form  a  self-governing  unit  by  themselves. 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  276. 


i88     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

In  each  of  these  three  instances  the  guiding  principle 
was  national  unity  at  all  hazards — the  assertion  of  the 
right  to  unite  and  to  maintain  a  union  based  on  ethno- 
graphical, cultural,  and  aspirational  demands. 

Within  the  period  covered  by  the  first  quarter  of  the 
present  century  and  culminating  in  the  Great  War,  it 
has  seemed  to  several  highly  competent  observers  as  if 
Nationality  had  latterly  developed  on  quite  other  lines, 
and  assumed  more  and  more  the  guise  of  the  right  to 
separate  or  divide  or  break  off  from  some  other  unit  to 
which  the  smaller  group  had  either  been  compulsorily 
attached,  or  in  which  it  had  become  absorbed  by  some 
accident  of  history.  If  we  consider  the  situation  as  it 
developed  in  the  latter  part  of  1914,  we  find  three  States 
united  against  the  Allies,  of  which  two  were  quite  un- 
affected by  the  principle  of  nationality — Austria-Hungary 
and  Turkey.  The  case  of  the  former  represented  an 
empire  held  by  dynastic  rights  acquired  by  marriage, 
the  whole  conception  of  which,  far  from  being  national, 
was  rather  deliberately  anti-national :  concessions  to 
Hungary  on  this  score  had  been  exacted  rather  than 
granted.  The  Ottoman  Empire  had  been  built  up  on 
the  negation  of  nationality ;  there  had  even  been  an 
attempt  at  the  extermination  of  nationality  in  at  any 
rate  one  instance,  but  gradually  Turkey  had  been  com- 
pelled to  grant  independence  to  other  of  its  constituent 
ethnographical  elements.  In  the  case  of  Germany, 
where  nationality  had  been  strikingly  vindicated  as  a 
principle  amongst  the  str.ctly  Teutonic  element,  the 
incorporation  of  Slesvig-Holstein,  of  Posen,  and  of 
Alsace-Lorraine  had  brought  the  dominant  element  into 
conflict  with  that  very  principle  which  had  made  the 
German  Empire.  So  it  came  about  that  at  an  early 
stage  the  Allies  declared  that  they  were  fighting,  inter 
alia,  in  the  interests  of  the  principle  of  Nationality  : — 
'  Once  again  the  Allies  declare  that  no  peace  is  possible 
so  long  as  they  have  not  secured  reparation  of  violated 
rights  and  liberties,  recognition  of  the  principle  of  nation- 


PLACE  AND  FUNCTION  OF  NATIONALITY    189 

alities,  and  of  the  free  existence  of  small  States.' l  When 
in  the  early  months  of  1918  the  situation  in  Poland  and 
Czecho-Slovakia  made  it  clear  that  in  countries  where  the 
spirit  of  nationality  was  nascent,  there  was  a  peculiar 
will  to  resist  Germanism  and  Bolshevism  alike,  examina- 
tion of  the  non-Slav  Border  regions  of  Russia  disclosed  a 
corresponding  state  of  affairs  to  which  there  was  no 
parallel  in  Slav  Russia  proper.  The  non-Slav  Border 
States  wished  to  be  themselves,  and  this  growing  national 
self-consciousness  made  them  opposed  at  once  to  any 
foreign  domination  or  internal  disorder.  This  movement 
towards  national  self-expression  has  persisted  in  various 
quarters  long  after  the  signing  of  the  Versailles  Peace 
Treaty  of  1919,  which  was  drawn  up  so  largely  in  terms 
of  triumphant  Nationality. 

At  this  point,  however,  the  question  may  quite  legiti- 
mately be  raised  as  to  whether,  after  all,  the  '  sore  places  ' 
of  Europe  have  been  healed,  or  are  likely  to  be  healed, 
by  this  thorough-going  application  of  the  principle  of 
Nationality.  This  must  depend  ultimately  upon  the 
conception  of  nationality  that  underlies  the  relationships 
between  the  elements  involved.  What,  then,  is  a  nation, 
and  what  entitles  any  particular  group  or  combination 
of  population  to  call  itself  a  nation  ?  Now,  as  objective 
matter  of  fact,  there  are  coherent  groups  of  population, 
rarely,  if  ever,  racially  homogeneous,  but  usually  con- 
nected with  a  definite  territorial  area,  which  have  through 
long  association  developed  and  maintained,  often  under 
repressive  conditions,  a  degree  of  social  life  more  complex 
than  that  of  the  ordinary  tribal  community,  as  also  a 
continuity  of  tradition,  and  a  depth  of  common  thought 
and  feeling,  more  or  less  distinctive.  All  this  has  in 
some  instances  reached  a  visible  degree  of  organisation — 
that  complex  of  institutions  which  is  called  a  State.  In 
face  of  all  such  situations, '  one  hardly  knows,'  with  John 
Stuart  Mill,2  '  what  any  division  of  the  human  race 

1  Allies'  Replv  to  German  Peace  Note,  December  30,  1916. 
1  Considerations  on  Representative  Government,  p.  296. 


IQO     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

should  be  free  to  do,  if  not  to  determine  with  which  of 
the  various  collective  bodies  of  human  beings  they  choose 
to  associate  themselves.'  And,  adds  Lord  Acton,  '  it 
is  by  this  act  that  a  nation  constitutes  itself.' 1  Now, 
while  the  characteristic  feature  of  the  20th  century  is 
the  formation  of  national  States  on  the  basis  of  liberty  and 
the  right  to  express  what  they  believe  to  be  distinctive 
in  their  cultural  life,  the  characteristic  feature  of  the  i8th 
and  i Qth  centuries  in  Europe,  not  yet  wholly  outgrown, 
was  to  form  national  States  on  a  dynastic  basis.  A  State 
is  a  community  of  people  united  into  one  body  politic,  re- 
cognising a  central  authority ;  such  a  State  is  recognised  by 
itself  and  other  States  as  independent  and  sovereign.  It 
is  the  Nation  regarded  from  a  particular  and  objective, 
but  mechanical  and  secondary,  aspect — as  a  concrete  per- 
sonality from  the  point  of  view  of  International  Law. 
That  which  entitles  any  particular  group  to  call  itself 
a  nation  is  simply  its  possession  of  some  creative  and 
constructive  common  feeling,  strong  enough  and  persistent 
enough  to  organise  its  claim  and  impress  other  nations 
with  the  justice  of  recognising  it.  To  indicate  at  what 
stage  or  size  or  dignity  nationality  begins  is  as  hard  '  as 
to  say  how  many  grains  are  needed  to  form  a  heap.'  2 
But  the  two  terms  are  not  necessarily  interchangeable. 
Thus  Scotland  is,  as  we  have  seen,  a  Nation  but  no  longer 
a  State,  Austria-Hungary  was  a  State  but  not  a  Nation, 
while  Holland  is  a  Nation-State.  The  League  of  Nations 
is  really  a  League  of  States. 

The  idea  that  is  suggested  by  the  British  Common- 
wealth as  the  best  type  of  the  more  inclusive  group  is  that 
of  a  group  of  self-governing  States  with  a  Central  Govern- 
ment for  a  minimum  of  purposes — e.g.  defence  and  treaty- 
making.  What  is  demanded  by  each  unit  or  member  of 
the  group  is  the  right  to  develop  itself  in  its  own  way, 
which  must  be  admitted  so  long  as  that  is  not  injurious 
to  the  other  members.  Now  where  that  development 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  287. 

2  A.  E.  Zimmern,  Nationality  and  Government,  p.  55. 


PLACE  AND  FUNCTION  OF  NATIONALITY    191 

and  assertion  concern  language,  literature,  traditions,  i.e. 
to  say,  spiritual  characters,  they  are  unlikely  to  be  in- 
jurious to  the  other  members.  It  is  when  ideas  of 
economic  monopoly  or  political  supremacy  or  territorial 
aggrandisement  enter  in  that  the  trouble  begins.  When 
one  nation,  believing  in  the  inherent  superiority  of  its 
national  type  or  ideal,  attempts  to  impose  these  by  force 
upon  other  nations,  resistance  is  naturally  developed. 

It  is  not  generally  realised  how  relatively  small  is  the 
part  played  by  reason  in  the  lives  and  activities  of  man- 
kind even  to-day.  The  integrating  factors  in  all  animal 
societies  are  instincts,  and  in  man — the  bondman  in  pro- 
cess of  winning  freedom  l — instinct  is  still  more  universal 
and  powerful  than  reason.  The  common  opinion  to  the 
contrary  is,  as  Professor  E.  G.  Conklin  indicates,2  due  to 
our  inveterate  habit  of  acting  instinctively  and  then 
trying  to  explain  to  ourselves  and  others  the  reason  for 
the  act.  The  dawn  of  the  Age  of  Reason  is  indicated  by 
the  gradual  appreciation  by  man  that  he  has  a  growing 
power  to  control  his  instincts  and  emotions  by  his  in- 
telligence, and  that  he  is  most  distinctively  man  when  he 
does  so.  To  insist  that  racial,  national,  or  class  antagon- 
isms are  inevitable  and  ineradicable  because  they  are  in- 
stinctive, and  that  therefore  war  will  be  a  constant  element 
in  human  society,  is  to  make  an  assertion  in  defiance  of  one 
of  the  most  significant  facts  about  man,  viz.  that  he  is 
par  excellence  the  educable  animal,  who  learns  by  ex- 
perience ;  it  is  also  to  ignore  the  growing  realisation  that 
war  is  treason  to  civilisation  itself. 

It  seems,  then,  very  probable  that  Nationalism,  Inter- 
nationalism, and  what  may  be  termed  Supra-nationalism 
are  three  stages  in  the  political  and  social  evolution  of 
mankind.  It  was  a  perverted  sense  of  nationalism  that 
in  great  part  led  to  the  Great  War,  and  it  is  only  a  de- 
veloped sense  of  supra-nationalism  that  will  in  the  future 
make  war  unthinkable.  That  is  to  say,  nationalism 
rightly  conceived,  can  never  be  an  end  in  itself ;  it  is  only 

1  Cf .  chap,  xi .  *  The  Direction  of  Human  Evolution,  p.  90. 


192     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

a  means  to  an  end.  True  nationalism  is  a  great  and  a 
glorious  thing,  and  shows  itself  in  the  development  of  such 
a  State  as  will  develop  its  distinctive  individuality  not 
merely  for  itself,  thus  providing  a  real  corrective  to  all 
characterless  and  anaemic  cosmopolitanism,  but  also 
with  a  view  to  that  individuality  becoming  a  contribu- 
tion to  the  life  of  the  world  as  a  whole.  In  this  way, 
however,  it  will  gradually  take  a  secondary,  which  is 
ultimately  its  true,  place  from  this  wider  point  of  view. 
For  the  interests  of  humanity  and  civilisation  are  greater 
than  those  of  any  one  nation  ;  that  was  in  part  the 
meaning  of  the  War.  Or,  to  put  the  matter  in  another 
way  :  nationalism  is  a  phase  through  which  every  such 
population  group  or  mass  must  and  will  pass  in  the 
winning  of  that  self-consciousness,  and  recognition  by 
other  groups  or  masses,  without  which  it  could  not  volun- 
tarily enter  into  relations  with  these  other  masses  for  the 
greater  good  of  the  whole — relations  which  may  involve 
to  a  certain  degree  the  surrender  of  rights.  Every  nation 
has  to  go  through  certain  phases  of  development  com- 
parable in  a  general  way  to  those  of  the  individual.  The 
germ  from  which  the  British  Commonwealth  developed 
was  undoubtedly  the  Union  of  Scotland  and  England  in 
1707 — two  countries  differing  greatly  in  habits,  laws,  and 
religion,  and  the  subjects  of  ancient  animosities,  and 
conflicting  sentiment.  Yet  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  before  Scotland  could  get  to  the  point  of  realising 
the  value  of  such  a  step,  which,  it  may  be  added,  was 
highly  unpopular  at  the  time  in  certain  circles,  it  was 
necessary  that  she  should  go  through  the  phase  of  inde- 
pendence, and  attainment  of  national  self -consciousness. 
Then,  only,  as  an  equal  was  she  able  voluntarily  to  enter 
a  limiting  union  for  the  sake  of  greater  common  ends. 

The  trend  of  the  world  movement  in  politics  on  the 
whole  is  in  recognition  of  this  fact.  With  the  growing 
security  of  the  idea  of  national  freedom  there  will  be  a 
corresponding  tendency  to  group  more  and  more  in  large 
Confederations  :  thus  we  may  eventually  look  forward, 


PLACE  AND  FUNCTION  OF  NATIONALITY    193 

for  example,  to  a  Russian  Confederation.  On  the  whole, 
and  in  spite  of  recent  events,  nations  as  discrete,  self- 
governing  States  are  gradually  being  reduced  in  numbers 
with  the  progress  of  history.  Languages  are  disappear- 
ing and  the  luxury  of  maintaining  and  speaking  a  re- 
stricted tongue  will  become  more  and  more  costly.  The 
distinctive  national  dresses  tend  to  pass  into  museums  ; 
more  and  more  we  eat  the  same  foods  and  burn  the  same 
fuel.  The  Atlantic  has  been  proved  to  be  only  fourteen 
hours  across  by  aeroplane  :  increasingly  the  nations 
become  mixed  up  together  in  the  bundle  of  life.  The 
days  of  physical  isolation  are  gone,  though  those  of 
moral  isolation  may  persist  yet  awhile.  It  may  fairly  be 
urged  that  the  United  States  of  America  supplies  us  in  a 
measure  with  a  working-model  of  the  supra-national 
State,  for  there  is  a  very  real  sense  in  which  the  United 
States  is  a  spiritual  conception.  The  population  of  that 
country  is  composed  of  English,  Dutch,  French,  Germans, 
Italians,  Poles,  Irish,  Greeks,  and  others  who  carried  over 
the  seas  every  physical  and  mental  trait  of  nationality, 
as  ordinarily  recognised  under  these  various  types,  but 
agreed  to  sink  them  all,  so  to  speak,  and  put  them  in  a 
secondary  position  as  they  subscribed  to  those  spiritual 
conceptions  of  liberty,  in  virtue  of  which  they  became 
citizens  of  the  United  States  of  America.  In  this  way  we 
may  reach  the  conception  of  the  United  States  of  Europe, 
and  thus  of  the  World — in  short,  of  a  Union  of  Nations 
which,  if  and  when  dominated  by  certain  ideals,  will 
realise  that  condition  of  things  foreseen  by  men  of  faith 
and  vision  throughout  the  ages,  and  variously  described 
by  them  as  the  Perfect  Society,  the  Age  of  Perpetual 
Peace,  or  the  Kingdom  of  God  upon  earth.  It  will  mean 
a  condition  of  world  affairs  in  which  the  phase  '  Live  and 
let  live/  secured  by  the  Great  War,  will  gradually  be 
replaced  by  that  of  '  Live  and  help  live,'  an  era  of  rational 
co-operation  in  place  of  insane  competition.  Not  that 
it  is  possible  or  even  desirable  to  attempt  to  abolish  com- 
petition :  to  do  so  could  only  be  achieved  at  the  cost  of 

N 


194     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  elimination  of  life  itself.  For  the  whole  progress  of 
life  has  resulted  from  competition  and  successful  response 
to  environmental  stimulus.  Yet  competition  can  be 
debrutalised,  controlled,  and  transferred  increasingly  to 
the  things  of  the  spirit. 

The  intermediate  stage  of  Internationalism,  on  which 
mankind  is  just  entering,  will  have  its  full  share  of  the 
difficulties  of  every  transition  period.  Objectively  it  is 
best  represented  by  the  League  of  Nations,  which,  by 
providing  for  the  meeting  of  representatives  of  the 
nations  not  merely  on  those  occasions  when  they  find 
themselves  brought  together  by  causes  of  difference, 
and  by  the  remedial  power  placed  in  their  hands  under  a 
specific  clause  in  the  Versailles  Peace  Treaty  itself,  will 
on  the  one  hand  obviate  a  repetition  of  one  of  the  out- 
standing blunders  of  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  and  on  the 
other  introduces  a  new  phenomenon  on  the  political 
horizon.  At  the  same  time  it  is  insufficiently  recognised 
that  the  nations  represented  round  its  table  are  not  all 
on  the  same  political  or  moral  level,  and  that  the  process 
of  education  which  it  must  primarily  represent  will  be 
very  slow.  The  natural  self-assertiveness  of  young 
nationhood,  the  peculiar  difficulty  for  it  in  submitting 
to  the  limitations  involved  in  membership  of  the  League 
before  it  has  hardly  had  its  fling  of  independence,  the 
possible  unscrupulous  attempts  of  maturer  nations  to 
corrupt  young  nationhood,  or  pander  to  it  to  secure  local 
advantages,  the  temptation  for  the  more  advanced 
nations  to  compromise  on  moral  issues  for  the  sake  of 
peace  and  harmony,  will  for  long  be  disturbing  elements 
whose  gradual  recognition  will,  however,  ultimately  mean 
their  transcendence.  Yet  the  man  who  despairs  of  the 
future  will  do  well  to  look  back  and  see  the  road  by 
which  the  human  race  has  come — look  unto  the  rock 
whence  it  was  hewn,  and  to  the  hole  of  the  pit  whence 
it  was  digged. 

But  all  this  means  that  the  nations  will  require  to  take 
a  much  more  intelligent  interest  henceforth  in  each  other's 


PLACE  AND  FUNCTION  OF  NATIONALITY    195 

development  and  welfare,  for  if  one  member  suffers,  the 
whole  body  suffers.  Indeed,  it  behoves  every  nation  to 
watch  for  indications  of  retrogressive  and  uncivilising 
tendencies  on  the  part  of  other  peoples,  expose  them 
mercilessly  as  soon  as  they  threaten,  and  so  rally  the  rest 
of  the  world  by  economic  boycott  or  otherwise  to  extirpate 
the  atavism.  A  spiritual  conquest,  or  that  by  virtue  of 
the  ideal,  such  as  the  United  States  has  been  making  of 
its  immigrants — although  apparently  not  to  the  degree 
in  which  it  was  fondly  imagined  that  this  was  being  done 
prior  to  the  War — is  the  only  one  that  will  eventually 
justify  itself  in  the  world.  All  the  nations  have  to  learn, 
and  can  only  learn  as  the  result  of  suffering  and  experi- 
ence :  they  have  all  to  be  tested,  and  will  continue  to 
make  blunders.  Now  these  failures  did  not  affect  other 
nations  so  deeply  in  the  days  when  they  were  not  brought 
so  closely  together  or  interpenetrated  one  another's  life 
as  they  do  to-day.  Probably  the  outside  world  was  not 
very  much  affected,  if  it  even  knew,  of  the  occasions 
when  the  Scots  assassinated  their  kings,  and  all  through 
the  iQth  century  Spain  had  notoriously  bad  government, 
but  the  world  went  on  pretty  much  the  same.  It  may 
be  hoped,  however,  that  in  the  future  this  indifference 
will  grow  less  and  less,  and  that  the  pressure  of  civilisa- 
tion in  the  form  of  the  public  opinion  of  a  League  of 
Nations  will  exercise  a  healthy  influence  on  all  retro- 
gressive and  incompetent  Governments. 

We  may  believe,  then — we  ought  to  believe — that 
every  people  has  some  cultural  contribution  which  it 
can  make  to  civilisation,  some,  of  course,  in  far  greater 
degree  than  others  :  for  no  one  surely  will  maintain 
that  there  is  any  single  nation  or  even  group  of  nations 
which  knows  more  about  human  knowledge  or  any  branch 
or  aspect  of  it  than  all  the  other  nations  put  together. 
A  nation  may  do  one  thing  well :  it  may  even  do  one  thing 
best.  Thus  it  is  a  commonplace  that  Greece  gave  the 
world  political  philosophy,  Rome  gave  it  a  system  of 
law,  and  Palestine  gave  it  a  religion.  But  there  is  no 


196     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

nation  or  group  of  nations  that  does  everything  best, 
except  in  the  imagination  of  its  most  provincial  members. 
And  what  is  true  of  material  achievement  holds  also  of 
spiritual  accomplishment.  It  apparently  takes  all  sorts 
of  nations  to  make  a  world.  But  the  maintenance  of 
national  culture  and  civilisation  must  henceforth  be  sub- 
ordinated to  the  ideal  of  world  civilisation  as  a  whole. 
Jingoism  is  simply  the  inability  to  transcend  the  in- 
stinctive selfish  outlook  of  the  unthinking  mass  that  too 
often  goes  the  length  of  hatred  of  the  foreigner.  True 
nationalism  is  something  quite  other,  for  its  development, 
as  we  have  seen,  is  sought  not  merely  as  an  end  in  itself, 
but  in  order  to  make  a  better  and  worthier  contribution 
to  internationalism,  and  that  can  never  be  done  where 
the  will  to  regard  other  nations  sympathetically  and  with 
respect  is  lacking.  '  To  be  merely  German,'  said  a 
German  writer, '  is  anti-German,' l  and  we  may  add  with 
even  greater  assurance,  'To  be  merely  British  is  anti- 
British.' 

1  Johann  Eduard  Erdmann,  quoted  in  Nicolai,  op.  cit.  p.  326. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  EVOLUTION   OF   INDIVIDUALITY 

IN  tracing  the  history  of  man,  in  linking  the  development 
of  his  specific  characters  physical  and  spiritual,  so  far  as 
is  possible,  with  whatever  suggests  itself  as  proto-typical 
or  prophetic  of  him  in  the  lower  creation,  a  moment  comes 
when  the  investigator  realises  that  not  merely  is  man  the 
flower  or  crown  of  creation,  but  that  he  is  also  the  out- 
come of  the  travail  of  a  world.  Inevitably  the  question 
then  arises  as  to  whether  with  physical  death  the  record 
is  closed,  or  whether  there  may  not  be  associated  with  him 
some  possibility,  if  not  some  value,  representative  of  the 
cost  of  his  production.  It  must  be  admitted  that  the 
question  when  regarded  in  this  way  is  not  easily  answered. 
The  more  the  inquirer  learns  of  the  actual  range  of  the 
mental  and  moral  development  of  the  human  race,  both 
as  it  exists  to-day,  and  as  it  has  existed  in  the  past,  the 
more  all  mass  views  of  human  endeavour  and  attainment, 
whether  scientific  or  religious,  tend  to  sink  into  insignifi- 
cance. For  not  merely  does  the  evolutionary  process,  so 
far  as  it  is  clear  to  us,  present  itself  as  a  movement  to- 
wards ever  higher  individuation,  but  at  first  sight  it 
appears  as  if  it  were  possible  to  ascribe  Individuality 
to  man  in  a  degree  which  is  not  predicable  of  any  other 
object  in  the  universe. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  much  that  makes  us  ques- 
tion l  whether  man  even  yet  is  not  more  rightly  regarded 
as  rather  in  process  of  attaining  Individuality,  however 
the  term  be  defined,  than  as  already  an  Individual,  at 

1  See  later,  chap.  xi. 

it? 


ig8     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

any  rate  in  any  deeper  connotation  of  the  word.  In 
the  forms  of  life  below  him,  the  vital  emphasis  apparently 
is  laid  upon  the  species  ;  it  is  in  the  interests  of  its  sur- 
vival that  the  constituent  individuals  appear  to  lead 
their  lives,  and,  as  sometimes  happens  amongst  lower 
forms,  perish  after  reproduction  of  their  kind.  In  the 
higher  phases  of  organic  evolution,  not  only  is  there  a 
general  reduction  in  the  number  of  offspring,  but  the  life 
of  the  individual  is  maintained  long  after  the  period  of 
reproduction  is  past.  It  looks  as  if  in  the  case  of  the 
end  term  of  the  process,  the  individual  was  coming  to 
have  a  peculiar  meaning  and  significance. 

Yet  nothing  is  more  difficult  than  to  indicate  with  any 
precision  wherein  Individuality  consists,  or  to  state  what 
is  an  Individual.  From  the  point  of  view  of  etymology 
the  word  suggests  the  idea  of  inherent  wholeness,  corre- 
sponding to  the  root  idea  of  the  word  '  atom/ — that 
which  cannot  be  cut,  or  divided  :  where  there  is  possi- 
bility of  activity  as  especially  in  the  case  of  the  organic, 
the  word  suggests  complementarity  the  idea  of  that  which 
is  incapable  of  dividing  or  fragmenting,  of  disruption  or 
dissolution.  On  the  physical  plane  it  is  apparently 
impossible  to  find  the  Individual  as  thus  defined.  With 
its  energetic  interpretation  of  matter,  modern  physics 
has  abstracted  such  a  character  as  essential  being  from 
the  material  world.  The  atom  is  no  longer  true  to  its 
name  ;  the  electron  is  a  statistical  unit  whose  mass  may 
vary  with  its  velocity.  In  its  practical  account  of  the 
origin  of  atom  and  electron  alike,  in  terms  of  energy, 
modern  physics  furnishes  us  with  discrete  particles  of 
such  regularity  of  size  and  uniformity  of  value  that 
any  one  may  take  the  place  of  any  other,  and  in  any 
mass  of  them,  one  portion  has  identical  intrinsic  pro- 
perties with  any  other  portion.  To  the  divisibility  of 
matter,  so  far  as  we  know,  there  is  no  theoretical  limit. 
Again,  what  is  true  of  one  type  of  crystal  is  true  of  all 
that  type  ;  the  same  principle  holds  throughout  the  whole 
inorganic  kingdom.  Wherever  we  are  dealing  with  the 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  INDIVIDUALITY      199 

homogeneous,  individuality  is  not  there.  In  atmosphere, 
hydrosphere,  lithosphere,  and  barysphere,  individuality 
in  terms  of  the  above  definition  is  unknown. 

When  we  pass,  next,  to  the  biosphere,  it  would  seem  at 
first  as  if  the  principle  in  question  no  longer  held,  for  the 
organism  is  characterised  by  certain  distinctive  features 
to  which  there  is  no  very  close  parallel  in  the  inorganic 
world.  Chief  amongst  these,  in  this  particular  con- 
nection, is  the  fact  that  the  organism  of  whatever  species 
is  a  discrete  body  of  more  or  less  definite  limit  of  size, 
which  in  its  apartness  and  relative  persistence  is  pro- 
phetic of  a  more  enduring  future.  There  is  something 
here  that  is  relatively  vastly  in  advance  of  either  cloud 
or  sandstorm,  in  respect  of  active  maintenance  of  form. 
The  crystal,  like  the  organism,  has  a  more  or  less  definite 
form,  but  it  is  elastic,  so  to  speak,  and  can  expand  or 
shrink  almost  indefinitely  under  certain  conditions.  '  In 
the  process  of  organic  growth  the  relation  between  mass 
and  form  no  longer  holds  in  all  the  exactness  with  which 
it  applies  to  the  growth  of  the  crystal.'  x  In  the  case  of 
the  latter  there  is  always  a  strict  relation  between  mass 
and  geometrical  dimensions,  whereas  the  organism  tends 
to  change  in  form  as  it  increases  in  size.  The  characters 
of  an  organism  depend  not  only  upon  what  it  is  but  upon 
what  it  has  been.  Growth  in  the  organism  implies  a 
cumulative  variability  in  form  which  may  eventuate  in 
some  departure  from  the  typical  form,  but,  at  the  same 
time,  in  size  and  form  alike,  the  organism  shows  a  con- 
centration and  a  degree  of  assertive  permanence  that  are 
suggestive  of  a  developing  end,  the  progressive  achieve- 
ment of  some  high  purpose.  This  concentration  and 
active  self-maintenance,  expressed  in  the  lessening  inde- 
pendence of  the  constituent  units,  and  by  the  progressive 
surrender  of  the  power  of  regeneration,  may  be  very 
clearly  traced  throughout  the  animal  kingdom.  The 
concentrated  united  achievement  of  the  first  organism 
presented  a  unity  of  action  that  had  hitherto  been  un- 

1  Prof.  James  Johnstone,  Th»  Philosophy  of  Biology,  p.  172. 


200     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

known,  and  the  more  intimate  association  of  its  elements 
offered  a  new  type  of  resistance  to  every  destructive 
agency  that  threatened  its  existence.  What  was  lost 
could  be  repaired.  What  was  injurious  could  be  avoided 
by  the  organism's  power  of  movement.  Nevertheless  in 
the  organic  kingdom  there  is,  to  begin  with,  no  departure 
from  the  general  principle  of  '  dividuality  '  as  outlined  in 
the  case  of  the  inorganic  realm.  Indeed,  the  organic 
kingdom  when  regarded  from  a  systematic  point  of  view 
shows  itself  as  a  succession  of  forms  characterised  by  a 
progressive  tendency  towards  wholeness  or  individuality. 
Or  conversely,  the  typical  forms  in  the  ascending  scale  of 
life  are  '  divi duals  '  in  a  progressively  lessening  degree. 
Since,  however,  even  in  the  highest  forms,  from  the  physical 
point  of  view,  complete  individuality  in  the  sense  of  the 
definition  is  never  attained,  true  individuality,  if  such  a 
condition  exists,  must  be  essentially  spiritual  in  character. 
Considerable  interest  is  added  to  the  question  by  the 
obvious  difficulty  in  which  the  systematic  biologist  finds 
himself  in  his  particular  endeavour  to  define  the  indi- 
vidual, for  any  degree  of  uniformity  in  definition  in  face 
of  the  graded  forms  of  life,  can  only  be  attained  by  the 
hazardous  method  of  changing  the  unit  or  criterion  at 
each  stage. 

Taking  the  cell  as  the  unit,  both  from  the  morpho- 
logical (structural)  and  physiological  (functional)  point 
of  view,  we  find  that  in  the  case  of  the  simpler  unicellular 
forms  (Protozoa  and  Protophyta),  we  are  dealing  with 
organisms  which,  after  a  period  of  growth  by  assimilation 
and  the  consequent  attainment  of  a  certain  size,  normally 
divide  by  a  process  of  simple  fission  into  two  daughter 
cells,  which  thereafter  pursue  their  own  independent  life. 
The  Infusorian  Paramaecium  divides  by  simple  transverse 
fission  with  sustained  regularity  for  many  generations, 
and  the  supposed  normal  cycle,  which  is  closed  by  con- 
jugation, i.e.  the  temporary  union  of  two  Paramaecia,  is 
followed  by  a  renewed  cycle  of  fission  of  the  two  ex- 
conjugates.  This  cycle  can  be  artificially  extended  to 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  INDIVIDUALITY     201 

thousands  of  generations,  which  may  also  occur  in  nature. 
But  throughout  it,  the  forms,  in  dividing,  lose  their 
essential  being  or  identity.  They  may  be  thought  of  as 
'  dividuals  '  of  the  first  degree.  The  typical  Amoeba, 
ordinarily  described  as  a  single  cell,  normally  grows  and 
divides  in  much  the  same  way.  But  under  certain 
conditions  it  passes  into  a  resting  stage,  at  the  close 
of  which  the  nucleus  divides,  so  that  the  single  '  cell ' 
becomes  a  hundred  others  which  recommence  the 
cycle  of  ordinary  or  asexual  division.  In  such  a  com- 
plicated example  of  the  problem  of  the  One  and  the 
Many,  there  is  no  question  of  individuality .  Again,  a 
plasmodium  of  Flowers  of  Tan  (Myxomycetes)  may  be 
artificially  divided  up,  and  there  is  almost  as  little  loss  of 
efficiency,  or  of  intrinsic  being,  as  in  the  case  of  an  in- 
organic substance.  We  can  consider  any  portion  of  it,  and 
give  a  complete  account  of  it  without  any  reference  to 
the  whole.  In  the  case  of  the  Bacteria  and  Protozoa 
generally,  dividuality  is  at  a  maximum  ; x  the  Individual 
is  not  here,  nor  any  basis  for  it.  By  this  it  is  not  main- 
tained that  the  products  of  such  division  are  in  any  sense 
mere  duplicates  :  as  a  matter  of  fact  they  sometimes  differ 
considerably.  Nor  is  it  suggested  that  there  is  no  indivi- 
duality in  the  ordinary  sense  of  distinctiveness,  about  such 
cells ;  on  the  contrary,  both  in  their  case  and  in  that  of 
higher  forms,  the  probability  is  that  the  protoplasm  of  the 
cells  of  different  organisms  is  as  particular  as  the  organ- 
isms themselves.  The  contention  simply  is  that  at  this 
stage  there  is  no  persistent  indivisible  whole.  What  sur- 
prises the  investigator  all  the  time  is  just  this  dividuality, 
which  he  must  perforce  regard  as  an  ultimate  expression  of 
the  fundamental  expansiveness  of  life.  In  conformity  with 


1  '  It  has  been  calculated  that,  since  the  cholera  organism  divides 
its  cells  in  20  minutes,  were  food  supplies  and  other  needed  environal 
conditions  suitable,  it  would  have  produced  16  hundred  trillions  of 
cells  in  a  day,  and  the  resulting  mass  would  represent  100  tons  of  solid 
residue.' — (Prof.  J.  M.  Macfarlane,  The  Causes  and  Course  of  Organic 
Evolution,  p.  58.) 


202     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  general  state  of  biological  opinion,  and  the  additional 
fact  that  almost  all  higher  organisms  commence  their 
existence  as  the  result  of  the  union  of  two  germ  cells, 
the  cell  is  here  taken  as  the  unit  of  life.1  But  that  should 
not  be  allowed  to  obscure  the  fact  that  even  the  simplest 
types  of  cell  are  comparatively  highly  organised  elements, 
containing  intracellular  units  of  a  lower  order  such  as 
chromidia,  chloroplasts,  etc.,  which  show  many  of  the 
characteristics  of  living  things,  as,  for  example,  growth 
and  division  inside  their  particular  environment  of  a 
living  cell.  The  suggestion  has  already  been  made  2  that 
life  in  its  earliest  form  was  probably  molecular,  and  it 
may  well  have  taken  the  whole  of  the  Archaeozoic  Era  to 
elaborate  the  cell.  The  significance  of  the  essential 
dividuality  of  the  simplest  forms  of  life  is  not  impaired 
even  when  it  is  realised  that  the  characterisation  of  the 
cell  as  the  unit  of  life  is  merely  a  convention. 

The  transition  from  the  unicellular  to  the  multicellular 
stage  is  perhaps  represented  by  colonial  Protozoan  and 
Protophytal  forms  such  as  Volvox  globator.  How  cells 
thus  began  to  learn  the  value  of  co-operation,  differentia- 
tion, and  division  of  labour  we  do  not  know,  although  it 
is  not  difficult  to  imagine  conditions  in  the  environment 
of  these  primitive  forms  in  which  grouped  cells  would 
have  chances  of  survival  that  would  not  have  been  the 
lot  of  single  cells.  Further,  the  probability  of  this 
colonial  Protozoan  stage  as  the  passage  to  the  multi- 
cellular  form  is  borne  out  by  the  fact  that  the  continued 
segmentation  of  the  fertilised  egg-cell  in  higher  forms,  for 
example  the  sea  urchin,  results  in  the  arrangement  of 
the  embryonic  cells  in  a  form  corresponding  more  or  less 
exactly  to  a  Volvox  colony.  This  stage,  resembling  a 


1  The  circumstance  that  mature  germ  cells,  though  having  at  that 
stage  only  half  of  the  number  of  chromosomes  characteristic  of  the 
species  and  so  being  morphologically  equivalent  to  only  half  a  cell, 
are  yet  considered  to  be  cells,  testifies  to  the  present  unsatisfactory 
state  of  cell  doctrine  in  this  and  other  respects. 

•  P.  16. 


FlG.  28. — Volvox  anreus.  A,  mature  colony  containing 
daughter  colonies  (/)  and  ova  (o) ;  B,  group  of  32 
developing  spermatozoa  seen  end  on  ;  C,  the  same  seen 
sideways ;  D,  mature  spermatozoa  X  824.  (From 
Weismann's  Evolution  Theory.) 

Part  tot. 


204     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

bramble  *•  pattern  golf  ball  in  appearance,  is  technically 
known  as  the  blastula — a  more  or  less  spherical  hollow 
embryo,  whose  wall  consists  of  a  single  layer  of  cells. 
Here,  however,  there  is  no  basis  as  yet  for  individuality 
as  defined  above.  There  is  no  constancy  in  the  number 
of  cells  composing  the  Volvox  globator,  and  where  in 
some  cases,  such  as  Pandonna,  the  number  of  cells  is 
usually  definite,  the  fact  that  the  whole  colony  is  capable 
of  breaking  up  into  its  individual  cells,  which  have  the 
power  in  turn  of  dividing  till  they  also  reproduce  the 
typical  number  of  cells  of  the  colony,  brings  us  back  very 
much  to  the  condition  of  things  in  the  Protozoa,  so  far 
as  the  argument  for  individuality  goes  :  the  dividuality, 
that  is  to  say,  has  not  appreciably  lessened.  In  the  case 
of  the  branching  colonial  forms  such  as  the  Vorticellidae, 
we  get  a  hint  of  that  differentiation  and  division  of  labour 
which  prove  so  effective  later. 

The  next  stage  in  the  advance  of  life  is  a  definitely 
multicellular  form,  which  may  be  represented  by  the 
little  freshwater  Hydra,  the  simplest  member  of  the 
Coelenterate  group.  It  may  be  thought  of  as  arising 
from  the  preceding  stage  by  the  infolding  of  the  blastula 
upon  itself — as  if  one  pressed  the  upper  half  of  a  punc- 
tured rubber  ball  down  and  in  upon  the  lower  half — 
thus  making  a  sac  whose  walls  are  two  layers  of  cells 
in  thickness,  with  a  mouth  at  the  anterior  end  leading  into 
a  primitive  digestive  cavity.  Arrange  a  tuft  of  tentacles 
round  the  edge  of  the  mouth,  and  there  results  the  idea 
of  Hydra  or  a  sea  anemone.  This  particular  stage, 
the  corresponding  form  of  which — minus  the  tentacles — 
is  known  as  a  gastrula  in  the  development  of  higher  forms, 
already  shows  very  marked  differentiation  of  the  con- 
stituent cells  of  the  two  layers,  the  outer  being  mainly 
protective  in  function  and  the  inner  concerned  with 
nutrition.  The  outer  layer  is  known  as  the  ectoderm 
in  the  adult  Coelenterate  form,  and  as  epiblast  in  the 

1  The  earlier  solid  stage  is  technically  called  a  mOYula,  from  the 
Latin  word  for  a  mulberry. 


Q,  00,  &. 


FIG.  29. — Early  Development  of  Primitive  Vertebrate  Form,  Amphioxus. 
(Adapted  from  Ziegler's  Models,  after  Hatschek.) 

7,  the  fertilised  egg ;  //,  two  blastomeres  or  embryonic  cells  formed  by  the  first  cleavage ; 
III,  stage  with  four  blastomeres;  IV,  morula  stage  with  eight  blastomeres;  V,  stage  with 
sixteen  blastomeres;  VI,  stage  with  thirty-two  blastomeres,  cut  in  half  vertically;  VII, 
blastula  or  blastosphere  stage,  cut  in  half ;  VIII,  eaily  stase  of  gastrulation,  cut  in  half ; 
IX,  X,  later  stages  of  gastrula  in  longitudinal  section ;  XI,  XII,  XIII,  transverse  sections 
of  older  embryos ;  XIV,  XV,  longitudinal  section  and  dissection  of  same.  (From  A. 
Pendy's  Outlines  of  Evolutionary  Biology.) 

Page  205, 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  INDIVIDUALITY     205 

gastrular  embryonic  stage  of  higher  types,  while  the  inner 
layer  is  known  as  endoderm  and  hypoblast  respectively. 
The  correspondence  of  form  is  best  explained  in  terms 
of  the  Recapitulation  Theory,  viz.  the  interpretation  that 
higher  forms  in  their  individual  history  pass  through 
stages  representative  of  stages  in  the  ancestral  history. 

Life  at  this  level  is  evidently  more  organised  and 
integrated  than  in  the  case  of  a  mere  colony  of  cells,  yet 
the  insertion  of  a  penny  into  a  sea  anemone  has  sufficed 
to  make  the  creature  divide  into  two,  and  Loeb's  experi- 
ments show  that  a  chopped-up  Hydra  can  regrow  itself 
from  pieces  of  very  varying  size.  There  is  here  as  yet 
no  individuality  in  the  sense  defined.  Indeed,  where 
the  power  of  regeneration  is  developed  to  any  great 
extent,  as  is  the  case  throughout  the  Invertebrate  King- 
dom and  in  the  Vertebrate  Kingdom  at  any  rate  as  far 
up  as  the  Amphibia,  the  conception  of  individuality 
cannot  be  maintained.  No  phenomenon  serves  to  em- 
phasise the  essential  plasticity  and  fluidity  of  living  things 
so  well,  perhaps,  as  just  this  capacity  for  regeneration, 
where  it  exists.  It  is  noticeable  in  a  marked  degree,  as 
might  be  expected,  amongst  the  Protozoa,  in  virtue  of 
their  dividuality.  It  is  also  a  feature  of  forms  like  Hydra, 
various  flat  worms,  and  the  Ascidian  Clavellina,  where 
division  and  mutilation  in  varying  degree  may  be  prac- 
tised upon  them,  with  the  result  that  the  sundered  part 
or  fragmented  portions  will  develop  into  the  type  again. 
In  a  definitely  vertebrate  group  like  the  Amphibians, 
regeneration  of  a  limb  or  of  a  sense  organ  may  be  repeated 
in  some  instances  almost  indefinitely  after  mutilation, 
although  the  conditions  are  further  narrowed.  In  the 
case  of  the  human  subject,  we  realise  that  the  severance 
of  a  limb  very  definitely  affects  not  merely  the  whole, 
but  even  more  seriously  the  part :  in  fact,  the  nail  is 
probably  the  most  complex  part  that  man  can  regrow. 
There  may  not  be  individuality,  but  certainly  there  is 
no  regenerative  dividuality,  in  the  sense  that  the  term 
is  applicable  to  humbler  forms.  That  is  to  say,  as  we 


206     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

rise  in  the  scale  of  life,  the  capacity  for  regeneration 
dwindles.     Yet  where  it  exists  in  any  degree,  wdividuality 
as  defined  above  is  in  that  measure  compromised. 
The  next  great  advance  once  more  follows  the  line  of 


Th- 


FIG.  30. — Branch  of  a  typical  Coelenterate  colonial 
form,  Obelia;  o,  mouth  of  expanded  nutritive 
member  ;  M,  medusa-buds  of  the  sexual  genera- 
tion forming  on  reproductive  member ;  Th,  horny 
cup  enclosing  contracted  nutritive  member. 
(From  Sedgwick's  Textbook  of  Zoology.) 

colony  formation,  just  as  it  did  amongst  the  Protozoa. 
Consider,  for  example,  amongst  the  Coelenterata  such 
a  group  as  the  Siphonophora,  a  subdivision  of  the 
Hydrozoa.  They  are  freely  floating  colonies,  in  many 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  INDIVIDUALITY     207 

of  which  differentiation  and  division  of  labour  amongst 
the  various  elements  have  been  carried  to  such  a  degree 
that  their  original  equality  and  independence  have  been 
lost,  and  they  might  even  be  considered  from  the  extreme 
point  of  view  as  mere  organs  of  a  higher  integrated  form, 
the  colony  as  a  whole.  Thus,  as  seen  in  the  case  of 
Nectalia  or  Physophora,  a  large  number  of  elements  or 
zooids  are  attached  to  a  common  stem.  One  of  these, 
at  the  upper  end,  is  modified  to  form  a  float.  Along  the 
length  of  the  stalk  are  two  rows  of  elements  modified  to 
form  swimming  bells,  whose  function  is  solely  locomotor. 
The  bottom  of  the  stem  is  expanded,  and  bears  a 
number  of  other  elements,  some  of  which,  with  mouths 
and  stomachs  and  tentacles  armed  with  stinging  (?) 
threads  for  the  capture  of  prey,  are  assimilative  in  func- 
tion, others  form  protective  shields,  while  yet  others  are 
limited  to  the  formation  of  germ  cells.  It  is  here  that  the 
biologist  begins  to  have  great  difficulty  in  applying  the 
term  '  individual/  as  ordinarily  employed,  because  there 
is  uncertainty  as  to  what,  in  that  sense  of  the  definition, 
it  ought  to  be  applied.  Shall  it  be  used  of  the  colony  as 
a  whole,  or  of  one  of  the  elements  or  zooids,  the  vegetative 
member  or  the  liberated  reproductive  unit  ?  From  our 
restricted  point  of  view,  the  colony  shows  itself  capable  of 
demarcation  in  various  ways,  while  on  the  other  hand  no 
one  of  the  different  elements  suggests  a  sense  in  which  the 
term  individual  is  ultimately  true  of  it.  They  are  not 
wholes  with  a  complete  life  of  their  own,  nor  yet  are  they 
free  from  division.  The  problem,  however,  has  changed 
in  form  somewhat.  We  have  now  to  consider  degrees 
of  dividuality,  for  in  some  cases  the  various  units,  diverse 
in  their  functions,  remain  organically  connected  together, 
while  others  are  set  free  to  reproduce  the  whole.  Now 
community  of  structure  in  whatever  degree — and  the 
degree  is  very  marked  in  these  hydroid  colonies — negatives 
the  conception  of  individuality.  There  has  not  arrived 
yet  that  which  can  persist,  unchanged,  individual. 
Indeed,  the  great  majority  of  the  parts  never  have  a  free 


208     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 


and  independent  existence,  and  those  parts  which  are 
liberated  do  not  retain  the  distinctive  character  of  the 
part,  but  develop  to  reproduce  afresh  the  whole. 

When  we  pass  to  the  great  phylum 
of  Worms,  which  undoubtedly  came 
from  Coelenterate  ancestors,  we  find 
that  in  many  groups  there  is  a  meta- 
meric  arrangement  of  the  body  in 
segments,  each  of  which  contains  its 
own  section  of  each  of  the  principal 
functional  systems — nervous,  vascular, 
excretory,  etc.  The  animal  is  a  sort 
of  linear  colony,  and,  for  example,  in 
the  case  of  the  Planarian  Microstoma 
lineare,  a  chain  of  elements  is  formed 
by  repeated  transverse  division  which 
eventually  break  away  as  separate 
daughter  Microstomata.  Of  the 
phylum  as  a  whole  it  may  be  fairly 
maintained  that  the  ^dividual  is  not 
there.  In  the  case  of  the  Annelidan 
earthworm,  however,  which  is  as  typi- 
cally a  segmented  form  as  any  other 
member  of  the  phylum,  there  is  a 
marked  lessening  of  dividuality,  and 
a  degree  of  differentiation  and  integra- 
tion which  no  longer  permits  of  the 
FIG.  31.— Dividuality  budding  off  of  so  highly  organised 
in  Microstoma  lineare  and  developed  a  part  as  a  daughter 
moduSi^by  ^sskTn"  segment-  Essential  organs  such  as  the 
o,  o',  mouth  openings.'  reproductive  have  become  restricted 
(FromSedgwick's  Text-  to  particular  segments,  and  the  dividu- 
ality is  actively  associated  with  these 
and  other  parts.  At  the  same  time, 
also,  the  earthworm  has  very  considerable  powers  of 
regeneration,  and  if  cut  in  two,  either  half  can  under 
certain  conditions  grow  into  a  complete  whole. 

The  same  character  of  metameric  segmentation  is  also 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  INDIVIDUALITY     209 

seen  throughout  the  next  large  phylum  of  the  Arthropoda 
or  animals  with  jointed  limbs,  which  have  in  all  proba- 
bility descended  from  Annelidan  ancestors.  The  common 
crayfish  is  made  up  of  twenty  segments,  each  with  a  pair 
of  limbs  or  appendages  and  with  some  of  the  systems,  for 
example  the  nervous,  also  to  a  certain  extent  distributed 
serially.  In  the  case  of  the  myriapods  and  centipedes 
the  same  characters  are  seen  in  an  even  more  extreme 
degree.  On  the  other  hand,  in  some  classes  of  this  phylum 
such  as  the  insects  and  spiders,  the  integration  and  divi- 
sion of  labour  show  a  distinct  advance  upon  the  earth- 
worm, the  segments  being  now  grouped  so  as  to  perform 
their  functions  more  advantageously.  Dividuality  further 
lessens,  limited  by  the  hard  external  carapace,  but  is 
still  sufficiently  in  evidence  in  the  reproductive  and  other 
systems  to  justify  the  statement  that  the  individual  in 
the  sense  of  the  definition  is  not  here. 

When  we  pass  to  the  highest  phylum  of  the  animal 
kingdom,  that  of  the  Vertebrata,  the  situation  is  little 
changed,  for  here  fundamentally  from  a  morphological 
point  of  view,  we  are  also  dealing  with  metamerically 
segmented  forms  '  derived  in  all  probability  from  some 
metamerically  segmented,  worm-like  ancestral  form.' l 
Of  these  segmented  structures,  the  clearest  indications 
are  in  the  vertebral  column  and  the  segmentally  arranged 
cranial  and  spinal  nerves.  Integration  is  more  and  more 
developed,  but  in  every  instance  there  are  still  distinct 
traces  of  physical  dividuality  in  the  shedding  of  cells  from 
various  systems  of  the  body. 

The  essential  dividuality  of  life,  resulting  in  its  physical 
flow  throughout  the  generations,  is,  however,  most  clearly 
seen  in  considering  the  phenomenon  of  Reproduction. 
This  in  every  form,  man  included,  involves  the  throwing 
off  of  certain  definite  cells  which  unite  in  pairs,  and  from 
the  resulting  fusion,  by  a  succession  of  cell-divisions,  the 

1  Prof.  Arthur  Dendy,  '  The  Biological  Conception  of  Individuality,' 
Journal,  Quekett  Microscopical  Club,  vol.  xii.  p.  472,  from  which 
paper  several  illustrations  have  been  taken. 


SG6 


FlG.  32. — Dividuality  in  the  Polychaete  worm  Myrianida. 
I,  Sexless  budding  form  (Se)  with  a  chain  of  29  budded  sexual 
forms ;  2,  male  form  produced  by  budding ;  3,  female  form 
produced  by  budding.  (From  Sedgwick's  Textbook  of  Zoology. ) 

Page  209. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  INDIVIDUALITY     211 

unit  of  another  generation  is  formed.  The  process  may 
be  repeated,  and  even  in  the  intervals  between  such 
repetition,  not  merely  are  these  reproductive  cells  still 
being  thrown  off,  but  also  cells  of  epidermal  and  other 
character  are  just  as  continually  and  regularly  being  shed. 
For  there  is  a  constant  renewal  of  such  cells  as  remain, 
as  gives  force  to  the  old  dictum  that  the  human  body  is 
renewed  every  seven  years.  Yet  all  the  data  connected 
with  reproduction  go  quite  positively  to  show  that  no 
sound  theory  of  Individuality  can  be  based  upon  them.1 
In  fact,  that  particular  form  of  reproduction  that  results 
from  fertilisation  had  originally  no  direct  and  necessary 
relation  with  the  continued  life  of  the  organism.  When 
we  regard  the  physical  stream  of  human  life  simply  and 
solely  as  such,  we  find  that  there  are  calculable  possi- 
bilities of  that  particular  combination  of  germ  cells  which 
formed  the  initial  stage  in  the  arena  where  each  of  our 
individualities  was  developed.  '  According  to  competent 
authorities,'  says  Professor  Jennings,  '  one  of  the  two 
pre-existing  combinations  from  which  my  combination 
was  derived  possessed  somewhat  more  than  17,000  germ 
cells,  while  the  other  produced  the  very  considerable 
number  of  339  billions  of  germ  cells.  So  far  as  condi- 
tioned by  the  characteristics  of  these  germ  cells,  any  one 
of  the  300  billions  might  have  united  with  any  one  of  the 
17,000  ;  any  combination  was  a  priori  as  probable  as  any 
other,  and  the  chance  that  my  particular  combination 
should  have  been  formed  was  therefore  but  one  in  five 
millions  of  billions  ! ' 2  And  if  we  include  the  genera- 
tions further  back,  not  merely  do  the  chances  rise  to  prac- 

1  Cf.  Julian  S.  Huxley,  The  Individual  in  the  Animal  Kingdom,  p.  70. 

1  H.  S.  Jennings, '  Heredity  and  Personality,'  Science  N.  S.  vol.  xxxiv. 
No.  887,  p.  907.  He  adds  in  a  footnote :  '  If  we  choose  to  take  into 
the  computation  out  of  the  17,000  ovules  only  the  400  that  actually 
mature,  the  chance  for  any  particular  combination  is  one  in  120  thou- 
sand billions.  After  reaching  the  thousand  billions,  cancellation  of  a 
factor  of  a  few  hundreds  or  thousands  ceases  to  produce  an  impressive 
difference.  The  figures  here  given  for  the  numbers  of  germ  cells  are 
from  the  American  Textbook  of  Physiology t  1901,  vol.  ii.  pp.  444  and 
454-' 


212     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

tically  infinity  to  one  against  that  particular  combination 
which  evolved  into  Jennings  (although  the  same  is  true 
equally  of  every  other  personality),  but  we  even  come  in 
face  of  the  same  apparently  appalling  wastage  of  potential 
bases  of  individuality  that  characterises  lower  forms  of 
life.  Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  strictly  no  chance 
in  any  of  these  combinations,  but  looking  at  the  matter 
objectively,  we  get  a  vivid  impression  of  the  real  state  of 
affairs,  viz.  no  Individuality  on  the  physical  side  of  things 
— simply  a  physical  stream,  providing  as  the  result  of 
certain  relations  and  activities  of  its  parts,  opportunities 
for  the  development  of  individuals,  which  if  they  are 
really  wdividuals  can  only  be  so  in  some  spiritual  regard. 
Or  we  may  change  the  figure  and  think  of  the  physical 
aspects  of  human  life  throughout  the  ages  as  an  enormous 
web  of  connected  strands,  and  each  individual  as  a  knot 
tied  in  some  particular  grouping  of  these  strands.  And 
if  the  sense  of  wastage  becomes  oppressive,  it  can  in  that 
degree  only  heighten  the  sense  of  value  or  worth  of  the 
actual  individuals  that  do  come  into  being. 

Accordingly  it  may  be  affirmed  that  throughout  the 
animal  kingdom  as  a  whole  there  is  no  physical  basis  for 
a  conception  of  individuality,1  and  it  will  be  found  that 
if  an  attempt  is  made  to  apply  the  term  to  the  animal 
kingdom  as  a  whole,  it  will  not  be  possible  from  the 
morphological  point  of  view  to  urge  any  definite  criterion 
of  individuality  that  will  be  of  general  applicability.  Any 
ideas  that  may  be  attached  to  the  word  on  the  purely 
physical  side  will  require  to  undergo  radical  change  at 
different  stages  in  any  review  of  the  animal  kingdom  from 
the  Protozoa  upwards.  In  colonial  forms  of  life,  even  in 
the  case  of  the  simplest  Hydroid  colony,  it  is  impossible 
as  a  rule  to  state  where  one  element  ends  and  another 
begins,  and  the  peculiar  phenomenon  of  the  alternation 

1  The  statement  holds  true  as  described,  in  spite  of  the  interesting 
and  significant  fact  that  in  the  case  of  the  human  organism  the  cells 
of  the  central  nervous  system  cease  dividing  after  a  definite  stage, 
although  their  metabolism  still  continues. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  INDIVIDUALITY     213 

of  generations — asexual  and  sexual — complicates  the 
situation  still  further.  The  same  situation  meets  us  in 
the  higher  plants,  where  in  the  case  of  an  ordinary  tree — 
the  asexual  generation — we  can  get  as  many  elements  out 
of  it  as  we  like  by  taking  buds  or  cuttings  ;  the  ^dividual 
in  the  sense  of  our  definition  is  not  there.  Further,  the 
extraordinarily  composite  and  mixed  results  that  can  be 
attained  by  the  process  of  grafting  both  in  animals  and 
plants,1  show  that  with  such  a  range  of  dividuality, 
natural  and  artificial  alike,  no  sound  basis  for  individuality 
can  be  found  on  the  purely  physical  side  :  if  the  ^dividual 
exists,  it  looks  as  if  it  can  only  be  a  spiritual  creation  or 
development. 

To  such  a  statement  of  the  situation  with  regard  to 
individuality,  perhaps  the  strongest  objection  will  be 
urged  from  evolution  itself.  It  will  be  claimed  that  the 
study  of  the  progressive  advance  of  life,  beginning  with 
unicellular  forms,  discloses  a  growing  and  ever  higher 
type  of  community,  in  which  the  independence  of  the 
whole  is  gained  by  the  surrender  of  the  independence  of 
the  units  composing  it.  The  real  individual  is  an  aggre- 
gate, and  at  each  stage  in  the  advance  of  life,  there  has  been 
development  of  a  more  complex  and  harmonious  type 
of  aggregate.  It  will  be  shown  that  with  each  marked 
advance  has  gone  a  tendency  on  the  one  hand  to  ever 
greater  integration  and  complexity  of  relationship,  and 
on  the  other  hand  towards  increasing  differentiation  and 
division  of  labour  amongst  the  units  of  the  colony,  so  that 
a  more  harmonious  co-operation  results  from  the  increasing 
complexity  and  with  it  a  higher  degree  of  independence. 
Particularly  well  can  this  be  developed  in  the  case  of  the 
cells  of  the  human  body,  and  the  not  unnatural  extension 
of  the  view-point  is  to  pass  on  to  human  society  or  the 
State  and  treat  it  in  the  same  way.  Thus  Julian  Huxley, 

1  '  We  can  even  join  the  hind  part  of  one  tadpole  to  the  front  part 
of  another,  and  the  product  may  grow  into  a  complete  frog,  derived 
from  the  halves  of  two  distinct  species.' — Prof.  Arthur  Dendy,  in  loco, 
p.  474. 


214     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

following  the  lead  of  Herbert  Spencer,  does  not  hesitate 
to  say  of  the  various  groupings  of  which  any  man  may 
be  a  member — family  or  club,  exchange  or  nation — '  that 
they  are  individuals,  that  here  once  more  the  tendency 
towards  the  formation  of  closed  systems  has  manifested 
itself,  though  again  in  very  varying  degrees,  so  that  some 
of  the  systems  show  but  a  glimmer  of  individuality, 
others  begin  to  let  it  shine  more  strongly  through/  l 
If  such  a  continued  sequence  of  idea  is  legitimate,  it 
becomes  clear  that  the  value  of  the  individual  is  lessened. 
He  is  nothing  in  himself  :  he  only  finds  his  raison  d'etre 
in  relation  to  the  community ;  he  achieves  his  end  with  his 
incorporation  in  the  State.  Now  there  is  no  doubt  that 
such  organisations  of  increasing  degrees  of  integration  and 
complexity  are  built  up  with  the  progress  of  life.  The 
question  is  whether  the  highest  thus  developed — the 
human  social  organism  or  the  State — constitutes  the  chief 
end  of  the  process,  or  whether  that  is  concerned  with  the 
individuals  composing  the  organisation. 

The  question  seems  to  receive  a  partial  answer  at  any 
rate  in  the  fact  that  any  comparison  between  human  society 
or  the  State  and  an  organism  is  fundamentally  misleading. 
It  may  appear  superficially  that  the  State  or  human  society 
is  composed  of  individuals  as  the  organism  is  built  up  of 
cells,  but  these  individuals  have  no  community  of  origin 
and  so  no  organic  unity  such  as  the  cells  composing  a 
single  organism  show.  While  the  cells  of  the  body  are 
all  structurally  connected  with  one  another,  the  whole 
trend  of  our  argument  goes  to  show  that  the  elements 
composing  society  or  the  State  are  human  beings  develop- 
ing wdividuality  in  the  literal  sense  of  that  word,  and  so 
distinct  from  one  another.  One  result  is  that  no  com- 
parison is  possible  between  the  perfect  social  functioning 
of  the  cells  of  the  normal  organism  and  the  activities  of 
the  individuals  composing  a  State.  The  interests  of  the 
individuals  are  not  alike  :  they  are  even  antagonistic, 
as  when  the  latter  are  considered  as  grouped  in  dif- 
1  Qp.  cif.  p.  143. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  INDIVIDUALITY     215 

ferent  so-called  '  classes.'  Again,  we  have  referred  to 
the  number  of  activities  and  functions  carried  on  by 
the  different  organs  and  mechanisms  of  the  human 
body,  and  in  particular  to  their  remarkable  co-ordina- 
tion. To  such  co-ordination  and  integration  of  activities 
there  is  little  that  is  comparable  in  the  modern  State. 
Finally,  there  is  nothing  in  the  State  or  social  organism 
literally  corresponding  to  the  brain  of  the  organism,  to 
which  can  be  referred  the  social  consciousness  with  its 
various  mental  and  emotional  states.  If  the  analogy  is 
used,  it  must  be  used  the  whole  way  through,  which  means 
that  it  breaks  down.  Although  the  highest  type  of  society 
will  undoubtedly  be  that  in  which  the  harmony  of  toil, 
mutual  aid  and  co-operation  in  achievement  are  at  a  maxi- 
mum, and  whose  complexity  does  indeed  spell  increased 
efficiency,  yet  the  units  composing  it  are  ends  in  them- 
selves, they  are  the  final  term  in  the  series  that  commenced 
with  the  ancestral  cell,  for  they  alone  are  individuals.  The 
society  may  pass  away ;  it  may  be  modified ;  it  may  dis- 
rupt. Nations  or  States  as  such  have  no  immortality. 
Perhaps  the  consciousness  of  this  is  in  part  the  reason 
why  they  struggle  so  piteously  for  mastery  in  the  present. 
Further,  we  can  already  see  beyond  both  these  concep- 
tions. All  their  distinctive  features  are  directly  associated 
with  purely  terrestrial  conditions.  The  vital  issue  then 
rests  with  the  individual  life,  in  some  kind  of  relationship. 
The  individual  may  perhaps  survive — in  relationship  with 
God,  and  this  be  the  end  and  purpose  of  human  life. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   METHOD   OF  EVOLUTION 

IF  the  method  of  Evolution  involves  the  co-operation  of 
factors  whose  number  and  degree  of  importance  are  still 
largely  undetermined,  and  so  must  therefore  continue 
to  be  the  subject  of  investigation,  certain  features  of  the 
process  stand  out  in  sufficiently  bold  relief  to  compel 
general  recognition  of  them.  The  theory  of  Evolution 
gives  us  the  picture  of  a  physical  stream  of  life  flowing 
down  the  ages,  yet  with  no  even  regularity  of  flow. 
There  are  the  rapids  and  the  pool-like  tracts  :  or,  if  we 
change  the  figure,  the  stream  '  pulses  '  as  it  flows.1  If 
we  look  at  the  record  of  life,  fixed  and  spread  out  before 
us  in  its  immeasurably  slow  length,  we  realise  that  there 
have  been  crises,  expression  points,  '  times  of  quickening,' 
moments  of  creative  evolution.  One  outstanding  fact 
is  that  in  the  more  obvious  cases  these  are  found  to  be 
coincident  with  environmental  change — physico-geo- 
graphical  change  mainly,  in  the  pre-human  stages.  The 
degree  of  this  relationship  will  probably  be  found  to  be 
increasingly  close  and  exact,  and  more  and  more  generally 
pervasive.  Sufficient  is  established  already  to  put  the 
known  coincidences  outside  any  laws  of  chance.  Change 
in  the  environmental  conditions  is  the  cause  of  biological 
change,  just  as  surely  as  a  movement  of  uplift  would 
increase  the  rate  of  flow  and  the  erosive  power  of 
rivers.  It  becomes  increasingly  probable  that  physico- 
geographical  change  affects  land  life  most  subtly  through 
the  indirect  aspect  of  climate,  the  character  of  which, 
as  well  as,  indeed,  of  the  ocean  currents,  is  directly  affected, 

1  Cf.  Prof.  R.  S.  Lull,  Organic  Evolution,  p.  687. 


THE  METHOD  OF  EVOLUTION  217 

let  us  say,  by  the  whole  series  of  movements  (formation 
of  mountain  ranges,  etc.)  resulting  from  that  warping 
of  the  earth's  crust  due  to  shrinkage,  as  also  by  the 
complex  rhythms  in  solar  energy.  '  For  example,'  to 
quote  from  Professor  R.  S.  Lull,1  '  the  most  generally 
accepted  single  cause  of  the  last  or  Pleistocene  glacial 
period  is  the  great  continental  elevation  which  formed  the 
Cascadian  revolution,  but,  so  far  as  our  knowledge  goes, 
that  would  not  account  for  the  successive  advances 
and  retreats  of  the  ice  mantle,  with  the  attendant  climatic 
variation,  and  some  other  factor  such  as  the  rhythms  of 
solar  energy  must  be  involved  as  of  supplemental  in- 
fluence.' 

Of  the  early  crises  in  connection  with  the  history  of  life, 
we  know  little  or  nothing,  because  it  was  not  possible  that 
any  records  could  be  preserved.  All  that  we  find  are  very 
occasional  traces  of  fossil  algae,  burrows  of  certain  worms, 
and  the  hard  parts  of  some  Protozoa  (Radiolarians).  Yet 
study  of  present-day  hot-spring  basins  and  shallow,  warm, 
freshwater  lagoons  with  their  somewhat  distinctive  life,2 
enables  the  competent  investigator  to  reconstruct  in 
imagination  on  a  certain  measure  of  solid  fact  still  earlier 
phases,  when  in  comparable  environmental  conditions, 
then  characteristic  of  large  areas  of  the  earth's  surface, 
'  molecular  aggregations  would,  from  exposure  for  millions 
of  years  to  varying  and  often  rapidly-changing  environal 
conditions  of  liquid  tension  and  temperature,  of  gaseous 
discharges,  of  liquid  chemical  stimulation  and  other 
modifications,  undergo  very  distinct  and  diverse  modifi- 
cation as  to  shape,  size,  consistence,  and  relation  to  sur- 
rounding media.' 3  The  comparative  structural  simplicity 
and  highly  developed  power  of  resistance  and  adapta- 
bility to  environmental  extremes  of  temperature,  desicca- 

1  The  Evolution  of  the  Earth  and  its  Inhabitants,  p.  109. 

1  The  reference  in  this  connection  is  principally  to  Bacteria,  and 
other  non-nucleate  forms  like  the  simple  Cyanophyceae  or  blue-green 
Algae. 

*  Prof.  J.  M.  Macfarlane,  The  Causes  and  Cowse  of  Organic 
(ion,  p.  50. 


218     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

tion,  and  other  forms  of  stimuli,  are  suggestive  of  great 
antiquity  in  these  particular  and  allied  forms  of  life. 
Amongst  forms  such  as  these,  as  Macfarlane  reminds  us, 
'  definite  and  invariable  response  to  environal  stimuli 
first  became  a  permanent  phenomenon  and  hereditary 
condition  of  each  species.'  l  It  is  increasingly  probable 
that  the  vast  deposits  of  chert,  graphite,  iron  ore,  and 
carbonate  of  lime  found  in  the  Archaean  rocks  had  an 
organic  origin,  having  been  precipitated  under  the  action 
of  pre-cellular  organic  molecular  aggregates.  Macfarlane 
associates  with  the  finer,  richer  protoplasm  of  these 
primitive  non-nucleate  forms  a  higher  degree  of  labile 
potentiality  than  that  which  characterises  nucleated 
protoplasm  '  when  actively  vegetating.'  2  But  their 
power  of  reconstituting  their  molecules,  i.e..  of  active 
self-maintenance,  and  throwing  off  waste  substances,  is 
an  advance  on  anything  found  in  the  inorganic  realm. 
It  is,  however,  an  energetic,  and  not  a  material  distinc- 
tion. 

As  soon  as  the  lime-secreting  habit  in  plants  and  animals 
was  developed,  there  was  the  possibility  of  rock  records, 
for  structural  hard  parts  were  now  in  existence.  What 
were  the  particular  environmental  circumstances  that 
led  to  this  habit,  we  do  not  know,  and  it  is  possible  that 
a  chitinous  skeleton  may  have  preceded  the  limy  type  in 
some  forms.  It  is  difficult,  however,  to  speak  with  any 
confidence  about  these  Proterozoic  days.  Probably  with 
the  exception  of  the  Arthropods  (i.e.  Crustaceans,  In- 
sects, and  Arachnids)  ah1  the  great  invertebrate  groups 
were  already  in  existence  by  Cambrian  days.  At  the 
same  time,  it  is  within  the  period  limited  by  the  Upper 
Cambrian  that  there  must  have  occurred  at  least  five 
notable  advances,  or  '  great  steps  in  organic  evolution,' 
as  Professor  J.  Arthur  Thomson  calls  them.3  These  in- 
clude cellular  organisation,  differentiation  of  the  simplest 
plants  and  animals,  the  making  of  the  body,  sex  di- 

1  op.  dt.  p.  53.  2  op.  dt.  p.  57. 

9  Tffe  System  of  Animate  Nature,  vol.  ii.  p.  383  ff. 


THE  METHOD  OF  EVOLUTION  219 

morphism,  and  those  progressive  differentiations  and 
integrations  in  structure  and  function,  such  as  the  re- 
placement of  the  radial  symmetry  of  the  starfish  by  the 
bilateral  and  segmented  symmetry  of  the  higher  types 
of  worm,  or  the  difference  in  '  respiration  '  as  it  exists  for 
a  sea  anemone  and  a  crab. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  origin  of  the  five  classes  of 
vertebrates  comes  well  within  the  range  of  possible  dis- 
covery. The  origin  of  vertebrates J  may  indeed  be 
thought  of  as  a  sixth  '  great  step,'  introducing,  as  they 
did,  a  new  type  of  nervous  system,  and  proving  them- 
selves the  conquerors  of  two  new  media  in  the  dry  land 
and  the  air.  Vertebrates  are  as  a  whole  distinguished 
from  invertebrates  by  the  fact  that  they  are  motor  types, 
which  make  definite  headway,  and  so  contrast  with  the 
sluggish,  drifting,  or  sedentary  invertebrates,  of  which 
some  Arthropods  (e.g.  Crustaceans)  and  cephalopod 
Molluscs  (squids)  are  the  most  aggressive  of  the  marine 
types  ;  yet  even  the  swift  movement  of  the  latter  is  of 
the  nature  of  a  retreat  brought  about  by  a  sharp  ejection 
of  water.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  respect  of  the  environ- 
ment, the  invertebrate  is  as  a  rule  the  denizen  of  com- 
paratively still  waters, — marine,  or  sluggish  terrestrial, — 
where  the  ebb  and  flow  do  not  ordinarily  carry  it  outside 
that  particular  environment.  The  vertebrate  type,  on 
the  other  hand,  may  be  considered,  originally,  as  a 
response  to  flowing  terrestrial  waters,  where  swimming 
power  and  ability  to  make  headway  were  necessary  to 
avoid  '  eviction  from  the  realm '  ;  hence  in  part  the 
increasing  probability  of  '  the  assumption  that  the  verte- 
brates are  the  outcome  of  terrestrial  waters.'  z  It  is,  of 
course,  the  case  that  certain  primitive  marine  vertebrates 
(e.g.  Amphioxus,  Tunicates,  and  Balanoglossus)  are 
known,  a  fact  which  might  be  held,  and  is  indeed  still 
widely  held,  to  argue  a  marine  ancestry  for  vertebrates, 

1  For  a  good  account  of  the  principal  theories  on  this  still  unsolved 
problem,  see  Prof.  R.  S.  Lull,  Organic  Evolution,  chap,  xxviii. 
*  Prof.  R.  S.  LulJ,  The  Evolution  of  the  Earth,  p.  114. 


220     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

but  it  is  more  consistent  with  other  data  to  consider 
these  forms,  the  majority  of  which  are  degenerate  and 
found  for  the  most  part  in  littoral  regions,  as  having  been 
unable  to  maintain  themselves  in  their  fluviatile  habitat, 
and,  so  to  speak,  swept  out  to  sea. 

In  determining  what  it  was  that  caused  the  change 
from  static  to  dynamic  waters,  geology  helps  us  with  its 
account  of  a  great  movement  of  elevation  towards  the 
close  of  the  Proterozoic  and  Early  Cambrian  days,  which 
'  changed  the  face  of  Nature  in  many  regions  and 
quickened  the  static  terrestrial  waters  to  rapid  and  wide- 
spread movement  over  all  the  uplifted  lands.'  l  For  the 
invertebrate  it  was  a  case  of  clinging  more  tightly  to  the 
bottom,  being  swept  seawards,  or  developing  ability  to 
stem  the  flowing  water.  It  is  after  this  period  that  we 
find  remains  of  the  earliest  vertebrates — armoured  fresh- 
water fishes. 

But  there  are  very  distinct  limitations  to  an  aquatic 
environment,  different  as  it  is  to  an  amoeba  and  a  highly 
developed  fish.  Organic  progress  must  have  reached  a 
definite  limit  comparatively  soon  if  there  had  not  been 
the  possibility  of  emergence  to  the  dry  land  and  the  air. 
This  was  indeed  a  moment  of  crisis,  an  expression  point 
in  evolution,  even  if  the  process  covered  by  it  may  have 
taken  myriads  of  centuries.  How  the  transition  was  made 
is  again  a  speculative  matter.  The  tidal  zone  at  once 
suggests  itself,  with  its  alternating  dry  and  aquatic 
phases,  but  the  forms  that  pass  that  frontier  with  regu- 
larity, mainly  in  search  of  food,  are  few  (land  crabs,  and 
some  fish,  like  the  Walkingfish,  Periophthalmus) ,  while 
the  respiratory  adaptations  developed  in  these  creatures 
are  merely  modifications  or  extensions  of  the  ordinary 
gill.  Now  the  lung  of  the  typical  vertebrate  is  the 
homologue  of  the  air  bladder  of  the  fish.  Those  fish 
in  which  the  air  bladder  functions  normally  as  a  hydro- 
static organ — the  Elasmobranchs  (Sharks  and  Rays)  do 

1  Prof.  R.  S.  Lull,  The  Evolution  of  the  Earth,  p.  118,  from  whose 
work  many  of  the  immediately  succeeding  facts  are  taken. 


THE  METHOD  OF  EVOLUTION  221 

not  have  it  at  all 1 — have  obviously  developed  in  a  dis- 
tinctively piscine  direction,  and  we  should  rather  expect 
the  transition  forms  to  be  more  akin  to  the  types  that  still 
make  use  of  the  air  bladder  in  its  primitive  capacity  of  a 
breathing  organ.  The  need  for  this  would  not,  however, 
develop  so  intensely  in  the  ocean,  but  would  theoretically 
be  connected  rather  with  such  fish  as  had  found  their 
homes  in  terrestrial  waters  beyond  the  limits  of  the  tidal 
zone,  where  owing  to  climatic  conditions,  the  volume  of 
water  was  periodically  reduced  to  such  a  state  of  stagna- 
tion as  made  its  aeration  insufficient  for  normal  life. 
Now  it  is  precisely  in  certain  Australian  rivers,  which  are 
often  thus  reduced  by  drought  to  the  condition  of  stagnant 
pools,  full  of  decomposing  vegetable  matter,  or  in  the 
marshy  margins  of  the  Senegal  and  Amazon,  that  the  re- 
presentatives of  the  Dipnoid  (Double-breather)  group  of 
fishes  live  (e.g.  Neoceradotus,  Protopterus,  Lepidosireri)  ; 
in  these  fish  the  air  bladder  functions  as  a  lung.  Another 
group  of  piscine  air  breathers,  the  Crossopterygii,  which 
includes  the  tropical  African  form  Polypterus,  has  indeed 
certain  structural  features  that  suggest  the  kinship  of 
this  group  with  the  form  which  was  probably  ancestral 
both  to  the  modern  Dipnoids,  and  terrestrial  vertebrates. 
Once  more  the  geological  record  helps  us  by  furnishing 
the  evidence  of  far-reaching  terrestrial  movements  during 
the  Silurian  period  which  resulted  in  widespread  aridity 
during  the  late  Silurian,  and  throughout  Devonian  times. 
This  meant  the  reduction  of  rivers,  and  particularly  of  the 
great  inland  sheets  of  water,  with  resulting  concentration 
of  their  fauna.  In  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  (Lower 
Devonian)  one  remarkable  feature  is  the  enormous 
numbers  of  fossils  found  in  very  restricted  areas.  Such 
congested  conditions  would  provide  a  great  stimulus 
to  air  breathing  and  any  activity  that  would  take  life 
ashore  out  of  these  packed  and  foetid  swamps.  Aridity, 
i.e.  a  distinctively  climatic  condition,  would  put  a  premium 

1  Unless  represented  by  a  small  caecal  pouch  of  the  pharynx  in 
two  or  three  sharks. 


222     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

first  on  lung  breathing  and  on  methods  of  aestivation  as 
it  increased,  and,  later,  on  emergence  from  the  rivers  to 
the  land.  We  are  not  surprised  therefore  that  the  first 
recorded  lung-breathing  fish  is  from  the  Lower  Devonian 
(although  it  may  be  expected  that  a  Silurian  Dipnoan 
will  come  to  light  some  day),  and  that  the  earliest  known 
footprint  of  a  terrestrial  (Amphibian)  vertebrate  occurs 
in  the  Upper  Devonian.  Throughout  the  moisture  of 
the  succeeding  Lower  Carboniferous  era,  the  amphibians 
developed  and  reached  their  zenith.  That  they  still 
returned  seasonally  to  the  ancestral  waters  to  bring  forth 
their  young  is  evidenced  by  gill  traces  in  the  fossil  young. 

The  geological  records  further  indicate  that  towards 
the  close  of  the  Carboniferous  era  a  return  of  arid  con- 
ditions and  reduction  of  temperature  in  certain  areas, 
due  to  renewed  earth  movements  on  a  large  scale,  made 
it  more  difficult  for  amphibians  to  return  annually  to 
the  natal  waters,  and  many  forms  abandoned  that  medium 
forever  ;  in  this  way  the  reptiles  came  into  being.1  To- 
day amphibian  and  reptile  stand  fairly  far  apart :  not 
so  in  these  early  times.  Fossils  from  the  Carboniferous 
and  Permian  are  sometimes  transitional  and  synthetic 
(e.g.  Cacops), — at  first  mainly  amphibian,  later  increasingly 
reptilian.  This  change  of  habit  involved  a  radical  change 
in  the  character  of  the  vertebrate  egg,  in  order  that  the 
developing  young  could  respire  air.  These  changes  in 
turn  rendered  possible  the  higher  placental  mammal 
at  a  later  stage. 

It  is  further  probable  that  aridity,  together  with  the 
glacial  epoch  of  the  Permian,  due  as  on  previous  occasions 
to  a  series  of  earth  movements,  had  much  to  do  with  the 
development  of  the  warm-blooded  types,  i.e.  birds  and  mam- 
mals. Aridity  means  that  supplies  of  food  and  water  are 
fewer  and  far  between,  and  this  together  with  the  increas- 
ing cold  and  intensifying  of  the  struggle  for  existence  called 
for  speed  and  endurance,  and  the  latter  would  be  greatest 
in  those  forms  that  developed  a  relatively  constant  body 

1  Prof.  R.  S.  Lull,  The  Evolution  of  the  Earth,  p.  125. 


THE  METHOD  OF  EVOLUTION  223 

temperature,1  regardless  of  external  conditions.  There 
are,  that  is  to  say,  distinct  limitations  to  the  reptilian 
type  of  constitution  :  how  much  the  mere  lifting  of  the 
body  clear  off  the  ground  by  the  mammalian  or  avian 
type  of  leg  would  help  in  all  these  respects,  merely  needs 
to  be  mentioned  to  become  immediately  clear.  Accord- 
ingly we  find  mammals  recorded  already  in  the  Upper 
Triassic  and  birds  in  the  Upper  Jurassic,  and  may  expect 
to  find  traces  of  them  even  earlier.  These  first  mammals 
are  derived  from  a  reptilian  stock  known  as  the  Cynodonts 
(or  Theriodonts),  where  the  dentition  has  already  become 
differentiated  in  true  mammalian  fashion  into  incisors, 
canine  and  molar  teeth.2  Birds  came  from  another  un- 
related reptilian  stock,  which  also  gave  rise  to  the  dinosaurs. 
Whether  they  passed  through  an  arboreal  stage  or  arose 
directly  from  cursorial  types  has  not  yet  been  ascertained. 
Archaeopteryx  (Upper  Jurassic),  the  earliest  known  fossil 
bird,  had  already  attained  the  power  of  sustained  flight. 
Lull  perhaps  overstrains  his  interesting  idea  when  he 
contends  that  '  the  same  primal  influence — aridity — 
which  produced  the  bird  also  gave  rise  to  the  dinosaur/  3 
but  it  is  important  to  realise  the  comparatively  simple 
nature  of  environmental  stimuli  that  led  to  very  profound 
and  far-reaching  organic  change.  More  perhaps  than 
any  other  group,  the  dinosaurs  illustrate  how  over- 
specialisation  or  overadaptation  is  a  sure  prelude  to  racial 
extinction.  With  their  huge  expensive  bulk,  small  brain, 
and  deficient  dentition,  such  slow-breeding  forms  had 
little  ability  to  adapt  themselves  to  changing  conditions. 
Reptiles  are  peculiarly  sensitive  to  climatic  changes,  and 
there  was  undoubtedly  a  lowering  of  temperature  towards 
the  close  of  the  Cretaceous.  The  low-lying  coastal  lands 

1  I.e.  warm-blooded  as  opposed,  not  so  much  to  the  misnomer  cold- 
blooded, as  to  a  condition  of  variably  temperatured  blood. 

1  It  may  be  stated  that,  amongst  other  points,  reptiles  differ  from 
mammals  '  in  that  the  lower  jaw  is  still  a  complex  of  several  bones, 
while  in  the  mammal  there  is  but  one  on  either  side  '  (R.  S.  Lull,  op, 
cit.  p.  128). 

*  Op.  cit.  p.  129. 


224     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

where  these  now  mainly  amphibious  forms  sported  about, 
seem  to  have  been  drained  as  the  result  of  earth  move- 
ments, thus  producing  change  in  food  and  other  conditions 
to  which  they  were  unable  to  adapt  themselves  sufficiently 
to  secure  survival. 

The  mammals,  which  had  meanwhile  appeared  in  the 
Upper  Triassic  rocks,  have  been  reported  as  archaic  on 
this  horizon  from  regions  as  far  apart  as  North  Carolina, 
Germany,  and  South  Africa.  They  were  of  no  great  size, 
though  warm-blooded  and  very  active,  and  were  eventually 
driven  into  brain  building  in  order  to  be  able  to  compete 
with  the  immensely  larger  reptiles.  Their  evolution,  how- 
ever, made  no  very  rapid  progress  until  after  the  disappear- 
ance of  the  great  saurians,  and  even  then  the  first  expansion 
of  mammalian  life  appears  to  have  been  unusually  static 
as  regards  three  very  essential  structures — feet,  teeth,  and 
brain.  There  was,  however,  a  certain  degree  of  specialisa- 
tion. Thus  some  were  herbivorous,  and  somewhat  light- 
limbed  and  speedy — the  so-called  Condylarths,  like 
Phenacodus.  Others  were  slow-moving  and  ponderous, 
'  relying  upon  weapons  rather  than  upon  fleetness  for 
defence  '  ; 1  such  were  the  Amblypods,  including  the 
swamp-loving  Coryphodon  and  the  highly  specialised 
Dinocerata.  A  third  group  comprised  the  carnivorous 
Creodonts,  which,  to  judge  by  brain  capacity,  were 
slow-witted  compared  with  their  modem  successors. 
Few  of  these  archaic  mammals  survived  the  Eocene, 
their  place  being  taken  by  other  forms,  invaders  of 
Europe  and  North  America,  that  came  either  from  some 
circumpolar  land  or  from  the  northern  part  of  what  is 
Asia  to-day.  About  the  earlier  evolution  of  these  in- 
vading forms  we  know  nothing.  But  that  they,  the  pre  - 
decessors  of  all  the  modern  mammalian  orders,  supplanted 
the  archaic  Eocene  mammalia  everywhere,  admits  of  no 
doubt.  Most  marked  was  the  predominance  of  grazing 
forms,  for  change  in  climatic  conditions  due  to  continental 
uplift  in  Miocene  times  produced  a  marked  increase  in 

1  Prof.  R.  S.  Lull,  op.  cit.  p.  134. 


THE  METHOD  OF  EVOLUTION     225 

aridity,  and  this  in  turn  meant  the  development  of  the 
coarser  grasses  at  the  expense  of  shrubby  and  herbaceous 
plants.  This  development  of  steppe  areas  resulted  in  a 
great  increase  of  all  grazing  Ungulates — horses,  camels, 
deer,  and  their  kind — and  a  corresponding  reduction  in 
the  browsing  forms.  With  this  last  Miocene  revolution 
we  have  already  co-ordinated  some  early  stages  in  the 
evolution  of  man.1 

While  it  is  no  necessary  part  of  the  general  argument 
of  this  work  to  attempt  an  estimate  of  the  different 
factors  in  Evolution,2  their  number  and  comparative 
importance,  it  must  be  abundantly  cfear  that  amongst 
these  the  Environment  plays  a  leading,  and  in  a  sense 
directive,  role.  '  Speaking  for  himself,'  writes  Professor 
J.  M.  Macfarlane  in  the  substantial  textbook  already 
referred  to,  '  the  writer  would  say  that  this  one  factor, 
"  environment,"  greatly  outweighs  all  of  the  others  in 
importance,  and  that  possibly  it  is  capable  of  further  and 
wide  extension  to  a  degree  that  even  the  Neo-Lamarckian 
does  not  go.' 3  He  refers  in  particular,  under  the  caption 
of  '  the  law  of  pro-environment,'  to  the  capacity  that 
every  organism  has  of  '  correlated  resultant  response  .  .  . 
to  the  summated  correlation  of  stimulatory  action,  that 
leads  to  a  temporarily  satisfied  state.'  4  He  believes  that 
he  has  established  as  the  result  of  much  experimentation 
in  plant  physiology,  that  '  certain  molecular  changes 
[are]  wrought  by  the  stimulating  agent  on  the  living 
substance,  and  later  it  may  be  on  certain  substances 
accessory  to  it,  as  can  be  observed  during  movement  in 
leaves  of  Drosera,  Dionaea,  or  Mimosa,  amongst  many 
others.  These  molecular  changes  inevitably  cause  a 
definite  course  or  pathway  of  movement  to  be  pursued, 
which  is  determined  during  that  measurable  period  of 
time  that  we  now  call  the  latent  period  or  period  of 

1  Cf.  antea,  pp.  76,  77. 

1  Cf.  The  Spiritual  Interpretation  of  Nature,  chaps,  v.-xi. 
B  The  Causes  and  Course  of  Organic  Evolution,  p.  1 74. 
4  Op.  cit.  p.  193. 

P 


226     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

excitation.  At  the  close  of  that  period — amounting,  it 
may  be,  in  some  plants  or  plant  tissues  to  [a]  quarter 
second,  in  others  to  several  minutes,  but  in  most  animals 
of  much  shorter  duration — the  organism  has  plotted  a 
definite  line  of  response  or  a  pathway,  even  though  as 
yet  it  may  be  motionless,  that  is  as  exact  for  the  future 
result  as  if  the  response  action  had  already  taken  place. 
Or  in  other  words  a  definite  mode  or  line  of  response  has 
been  determined  on,  that  will  cause  the  organism  to 
reach  out  or  occupy  a  definite  environal  relation.' l 
So  also  from  his  very  different  field  of  work  of  explora- 
tion in  Asia,  Pumpelly  insists  :  '  What  I  wish  particularly 
to  emphasise  is  the  conception  that  in  the  intervention  of 
the  glacial  period  and  its  reaction  on  the  inner-continental 
conditions,  we  must  see  the  initial — the  motiving — factors 
in  the  evolution  of  the  intellectual  and  social  life  of  man.'  z 
The  more  this  direct  action  of  the  Environment  is  realised, 
the  more  it  becomes  clear  that  evolution  does  not  take 
place  as  the  result  of  the  intrinsic  forces  of  the  organism 
independent  of  the  extrinsic  forces  of  the  Environment, 
and  the  more  incredible  it  becomes  that  the  latter  have 
operated  through  the  aeons  of  time  on  organisms  without 
producing  characters  that  become  relatively  fixed. 
Throughout  there  has  been  interaction,8  the  general 
result  of  which  has  been  harmony,  although  progress 
has  always  depended  upon  that  harmony  being  some- 
thing very  different  from  complete  adaptation  to  the 
physical  proximate  aspects  of  the  Environment  of  the 
moment. 

One  other  feature,  vital  to  our  line  of  thought,  emerges 
upon  close  examination  of  the  racial  history  of  life.  It 
is  that  of  the  establishment  of  dominating  structural 

»  Op.  cit.  p.  194.  *  Op.  cit.  p.  66. 

»  Cf.  H.  F.  Osborn ;  '  We  cannot  avoid  expressing  as  our  pres«nt 
opinion  that  these  causes  [of  germ  evolution]  are  internal — external 
rather  than  purely  internal — in  other  words,  that  some  kind  of  relation 
exists  between  the  actions,  reactions,  and  interactions  of  the  germ,  of 
the  organism,  and  of  the  environment.' — (The  Origin  and  Evolution  of 
Life,  p.  283.) 


THE  METHOD  OF  EVOLUTION  227 

characters  of  successively  progressive  value  in  the  well- 
marked  aeons  of  life,  and  of  a  progressive  change  of 
criterion  in  the  survival-determining  factor.  When  first 
we  become  aware  of  life  it  is  unicellular  in  type  and 
strictly  limited  in  the  range  of  its  commerce  with  the 
environment.  A  drop  of  water  is  the  Amoeba's  uni- 
verse ;  the  business  and  criterion  of  its  existence  is 
assimilation.  If  it  assimilates  well,  it  divides,  and  con- 
tinuing to  assimilate  and  divide,  maintains  itself.  Assimi- 
lation still  holds  a  very  large  place  in  the  life  of  the  next 
highest  group,  the  Coelenterata,  whose  sac-shaped  bodies 
are  principally  stomach,  but  the  natural  dividuality 
has  lessened,  and  reproduction  is  now  mainly  sexual. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  largely  sedentary  character  of 
the  group  has  left  them  without  any  greatly  developed 
muscular  system  beyond  what  is  needed  to  carry  on 
digestion.  The  muscular  system  is,  however,  a  char- 
acteristic feature  of  the  next  stage  of  animal  life,  from 
the  worms  up  to  the  mammals.  The  muscular  body  of 
the  worm,  so  eminently  adapted  to  locomotion,  gave  it 
an  advantage  over  preceding  types  hi  the  securing  of 
food  supplies,  and  in  connection  with  the  activities  associ- 
ated with  its  reproductive  system,  than  which  none,  with 
the  possible  exception  of  the  mollusc,  is  more  complicated 
and  highly  developed.  But  a  developed  muscular  system 
implies  development  of  the  nervous  system  that  controls 
it.  Increased  powers  of  locomotion  call  for  an  added 
alertness  and  exploratory  power  in  relation  to  that 
Environment  which  is  the  arena  of  movement,  and  so 
we  find  in  this  group,  as  in  the  higher  molluscs  and 
insects,  a  marked  development  of  sense  organs  and  of  the 
nervous  system  generally.  There  is  an  increasing  range 
of  commerce  with,  and  at  the  same  time,  independence 
of,  the  environment,  so  that  while  the  amoeba  and  the 
fish  may  inhabit  the  same  environment,  that  environment 
is  a  very  different  thing  to  the  two  creatures.  This  reign 
of  muscular  power  still  continued  through  the  reptilian 
phase  that  developed  at  some  point  out  of  the  amphibian, 


228     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

and  only  began  to  wane  when  inability  to  succeed  in  that 
line  drove  birds  into  the  air  and  some  of  the  early  mammals 
into  increased  agility  and  more  definite  brain-building  to 
escape  with  their  lives  where  they  could  not  compete  in 
physical  strength.  Thereafter  cunning,  or  mind,  gained 
the  day,  and  again  the  criterion  of  survival  had 
changed. 

It  would  thus  appear  that  successive,  broadly  marked 
stages  in  the  evolution  of  life  have  been  dominated  by 
strongly  developed  features — assimilation,  sexual  repro- 
duction, muscular  force,  cunning  or  mind — each  of  which 
has  been  in  its  turn  the  survival-determining  factor  par 
excellence.  The  rising  into  power  of  one  of  these  factors  does 
not,  of  course,  mean  the  disappearance  of  the  one  that  held 
sway  previous  to  it.  It  still  continues  to  function,  but  in 
a  subordinate  way.  Further,  this  cycle  or  rhythm  may  be 
traced  not  merely  in  the  history  of  life  as  a  whole,  but  to 
a  lesser  degree  in  such  a  group  as  the  vertebrates,  or  even 
the  mammals.  There  was,  for  example,  a  day  when  the 
carnivorous  group,  representing  the  stage  of  muscular 
force,  was  dominant  amongst  the  mammals,  while  in  the 
tree-tops  the  ancestral  primate  developed  hand  and  brain. 
Now  each  of  these  stages  has  implied  in  the  progressive 
forms  a  growing  independence  of  the  proximate  physical 
elements  of  the  Environment,1  and  at  the  same  time  an 
increasing  range  of  commerce  with,  and  conformity  to, 
some  deeper  element  in  it,  not,  of  course,  fully  under- 
stood by  them.  On  the  other  hand,  all  along,  other  forms 
have  settled  down  in  an  equilibrium  of  complete  adapta- 
tion to  some  immediate  aspect  of  the  Environment.  It 
has  always  been  the  easy  thing  to  do,  but  such  over- 
specialisation  on  their  part  has  inevitably  spelled  their 
evolutionary  doom.  At  whatever  point  we,  as  it  were, 
look  in  on  the  process,  we  become  aware  of  the  Environ- 
ment, either  in  its  aspect  of  inorganic  nature  or  other 
organic  life,  acting  on  living  forms  through  pressure  or 
stimulus,  moulding,  challenging,  directing,  developing, 

1  Cf.  chap.  xii. 


THE  METHOD  OF  EVOLUTION  229 

selecting,  by  ever  higher  criteria.  So  we  may  perhaps 
think,  with  Professor  J.  M.  Tyler,1  of  the  minute 
ancestral  vertebrate  as  also  forced  into  maintaining 
the  swimming  habit,  which  resulted  in  the  development 
first  of  the  notochord  and  latterly  of  the  backbone,  by 
the  pressure  from  the  physically  stronger  invertebrate 
forms  that  crowded  the  rich  feeding  grounds  at  the 
bottom.  Similarly  also,  in  addition  to  the  climatic 
factor  already  noticed,  the  pressure  from  more  powerful 
marine  enemies  like  the  sharks  may  have  been  an  element 
in  pushing  the  earliest  air-breathing  vertebrates  towards, 
and  so  latterly  on  to,  the  land,  just  as  later  the  apes 
remained  and  developed  in  the  trees  because  the  ground 
was  unsafe  with  carnivores.  Yet  in  all  this  reaction  to 
the  Environment  there  has  also  been  co-operation  be- 
tween forms  in  a  growing  degree  from  the  beginning. 
The  way  of  life  has  not  been  a  Via  Dolorosa  throughout, 
in  spite  of  the  continual  policing  injunction  of  the  Environ- 
ment to  move  on  and  move  up.  If  growing  freedom  has 
been  used  in  many  cases  to  escape  from  the  pressure,  to 
get  out  of  the  narrow,  upward  way  that  was  to  lead  to 
man,  by  complete  adaptation  to  some  trivial  or  tem- 
porary aspect  as  in  parasitism  or  in  some  other  way, 
such  a  condition  of  static  equilibrium  has  always  in  the 
end  meant  stagnation  and  degeneration  for  the  forms  in 
question.  At  every  stage  there  have  been  these  varied 
types  of  response  to  the  stimulating,  beckoning  Environ- 
ment :  throughout  it  is  only  by  '  a  very  small  remnant ' 
that  the  advance  has  been  maintained. 

Finally,  in  this  particular  connection  it  is  worthy  of 
notice  that  that  which  was  to  be  essentially  the  dominating 
survival  character  of  a  later  stage,  was,  before  it  had  come 
into  the  mastery  of  life,  in  bondage  to  the  immediately 
lower  character.  As  soon  as  it  was  sensed  and  acted  upon 
— although  this  could  not  be  deliberately  so  before  the 
arrival  of  man — it  ensured  racial  survival  to  those  that 

1  The  New  Stone  Age,  p.  5.  Cf.  also  by  the  same  authority,  The 
Whence  and  the  Whither  of  Man,  pp.  194,  195. 


230     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

followed  it,  although  the  present  belonged  to  those  who 
still  conformed  to  the  criterion  that  was  passing  away. 
That  is  to  say,  every  creature  at  any  stage,  has  been  a 
bundle  of  possibilities,  which  increased  in  number  with 
the  advance  of  life,  and  this  is  supremely  true  of  man. 
For  him,  as  for  all  the  forms  leading  up  to  him,  to  conform 
to  the  criteria  of  the  past  has  been  to  imperil  his  own 
existence  ;  to  conform  to  the  vanishing  criterion  of  the 
present  has  been  to  risk  his  racial  existence.  The  only 
way  in  which  the  future  progress  has  been  successively 
and  triumphantly  secured  has  been  by  conformity  to  some 
as  yet  dimly  appreciated  but  higher  element  revealed  in 
the  unmasking  Environment,  which  in  its  ultimate  aspect 
is  God. 

We  have  seen  something  of  the  method  by  which  Life 
has  with  difficulty,  because  of  the  intractableness  of  her 
material,  pushed  forward  in  her  creative  mission,  striving 
to  overcome  and  progress,  at  first  by  increase  in  the  mere 
size  of  her  representatives,  or  in  the  complexity  of  their 
organisation,  or  the  lengthening  of  their  span  of  days. 
And  when  these  methods  have  become  exhausted,  it  is 
as  if  she  had  once  more  changed  her  method,  and  tried 
to  advance  by  means  of  that  miracle  of  comprehension 
before  and  after,  a  human  consciousness,  which  increases 
the  organism's  size  by  all  kinds  of  mechanical  devices, 
manifolds  its  activities  by  an  infinity  of  crafts,  and  places 
its  conquests  outside  of  the  destructive  tendencies  of 
time  in  written  record  or  objective  representation. 
Nevertheless  when  we  regard  this  latest  product  of  the 
process,  history  shows  us  that  the  earliest  groupings  of 
man  in  family  or  tribe  or  nation  have  come  into  existence 
and  in  many  cases  completely  disappeared,  just  like  some 
animal  species  of  the  past,  under  conditions  that  look  as 
if  the  criterion  of  survival  were  again  changing  and  now 
becoming  increasingly  a  moral  one.  Recorded  human 
history  covers  but  a  very  small  fraction  of  the  period  of 
man's  existence  on  the  earth,  but  it  deals  with  a  period 
in  which  he  is  still  in  process  of  attaining  wdividuality, 


THE  METHOD  OF  EVOLUTION  231 

a  period  in  which  survival  as  the  result  of  physical  force 
has  been  already  transcended,  and  survival  as  due  to 
mental  capacity  is  slowly  being  replaced  by  survival  due 
to  moral  character.  Human  history  shows  as  matter  of 
the  most  literal  fact  that  with  regard  to  the  larger  aggre- 
gates of  mankind,  '  righteousness  exalte th  a  nation,' l 
in  the  ultimate  sense  that  righteousness  alone  is  gradually 
coming  to  mean  survival  for  peoples,  and  that  there  is  an 
'Eternal  Power,  not  ourselves,  making  for  righteousness,'  * 
in  alignment  or  relationship  with  which,  as  revealed  hi  the 
unmasking  Environment,  progress  and  survival  are  alone 
secured.  But  if  this  is  true  of  the  aggregates  of  men, 
it  is  also  most  probably  true  of  the  individual  man. 
That  is  to  say,  while  man  physically  regarded  is  not  wholly 
free  from  dividuality,  so  that  no  valid  conception  of  the 
persistent  individual  can  be  formed  on  physical  lines,  yet 
in  association  with  that  physical  stream  of  life  throughout 
the  ages  there  has  not  merely  developed  a  sentient  and 
spiritual  life  in  gradual  attainment  of  individuality, 
but  with  man  has  come  into  existence  the  possibility  of  a 
manner  of  life  with  survival-value,  that  as  far  transcends 
the  life  of  cunning,  as  the  latter  transcended  or  had 
survival- value  over  the  life  of  muscular  force.  Than  this 
spiritual  life  which  has  throughout  organic  history  been 
gradually  coming  to  light  and  dominance  we  can  imagine 
nothing  higher,  therefore  if  individuality,  which  will  from 
this  point  of  view  be  equivalent  to  immortality,  is  attain- 
able by  man,  we  can  only  suppose  that  it  is  hi  some  way 
related  to  this  manner  of  life  ;  in  some  way  it  is  attained 
as  the  result  of  it. 

The  opposing  view  is  that  which  considers  man  to  be 
inherently  an  immortal  soul.  This  may  be  the  Platonic 
conception  ;  it  does  not  appear  to  be  the  Christian  idea.8 
And  the  more  clearly  it  is  realised  that  the  process  of 
evolution  has  been  selective  throughout,  with  a  gradually 

1  Prov.  14  S4. 

*  Matthew  Arnold,  Literature  and  Dogma,  pp.  137,  143. 

*  Cf.  chap.  xiii. 


232     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

rising  criterion  of  survival,  the  more  will  the  onus  of  proof 
of  any  such  break  in  the  continuity  of  evolutionary  method 
be  thrown  on  those  who  maintain  an  inherent  immor- 
tality for  man.  To-day  we  are  aware  of  a  long  evolution- 
ary history  of  forms  that  led  directly  to  what  at  a  certain 
stage  we  recognise  as  man,  but  it  is  impossible  to  lay 
our  finger,  as  it  were,  on  one  particular  point  in  that 
history  and  say  that  thereafter  we  are  dealing  with  an 
inherently  immortal  being.  There  is  no  argument  for  the 
inherent  immortality  of  man  that  would  not  be  valid 
for  the  immortality  of  all  created  life,  for  while  the 
sentiency  of  an  amoeba  and  the  self-consciousness  of  man 
seem  so  removed  as  to  make  each  sui  generis,  yet  the 
study  of  comparative  psychology  is  slowly  but  surely 
showing  that  the  difference  is  but  one  of  degree,  with  no 
intermediate  stage  unaccounted  for.  The  stages  repre- 
presented  by  (i)  awareness  on  the  part  of  the  creature 
of  what  it  is  doing,  (2)  that  awareness  coupled  with 
recollection  of  past  behaviour  and  the  results  of  such 
behaviour,  and  (3)  that  awareness  and  memory  used  as 
a  basis  for  determining  future  behaviour,  in  the  light  of 
the  ability  to  estimate  consequences  and  of  some  sense 
of  partnership  in,  or  responsibility  to,  Reality  as  grow- 
ingly  understood,  are  progressive  enrichments  of  the 
same  spiritual  life.  They  are  the  result  of  developed 
powers,  of  more  knowledge,  of  deeper  understanding. 
They  are  expressions  of  a  growing  and  developing  centre 
or  self,  which  is  however  moulded  and  made,  or  un- 
made, as  the  result  of  its  activity.  Nor  is  there  any 
intrinsic  reason  why  a  being  that  has  developed  the  power 
to  choose  between  good  and  evil  should  be  immortal 
simply  because  it  has  developed  this  capacity  ;  surely 
what  must  be  determinative  of  the  future  is  the  actual 
relationship  chosen  and  realised.  And,  finally,  with  grow- 
ing knowledge  of  the  kind  of  world  in  which  we  find  our- 
selves, it  becomes  increasingly  impossible  to  believe — to 
take  a  recent  example — that  the  creation  of  immortal 
souls  could  be  contingent  upon  the  passage  of  lustful 


THE  METHOD  OF  EVOLUTION  233 

German  soldiery  through  French  and  Belgian  villages.1 
In  many  different  kinds  of  ways  and  under  differing 
conditions  human  beings  are  brought  into  the  world  who 
represent,  if  the  above  deductions  are  sound,  no  more  and 
yet  no  less  than  potentially  immortal  souls.  The  pos- 
sibilities, that  is  to  say,  of  individuality  or  immortality, 
are  not  directly  related  to  any  origin  by  fusion  of  two 
particular  cells — they  are  beyond  all  merely  genetic 
relationship — nor  yet  to  any  particular  structure  in  grey 
matter.  They  do  not  have  their  origin  in  any  special 
feature  of  the  taxonomist,  anatomist,  or  psychologist. 
Such  continued  persistence  can  therefore  only  be  essen- 
tially in  virtue  of  a  spiritual  relationship.2  All  ad- 
vance ultimately  means  that  the  organism  has  entered 
into  some  new  relationship  with  the  Environment,  and 
it  is  only  one  part  of  the  result  of  this  new  relationship 
that  other  aspects  with  which  it  was  previously  in  re- 
lationship now  appear  in  a  new  light.  Now  the  most 
distinctive  feature  about  the  evolutionary  process  as  a 
whole  is  just  the  fact  of  the  successive  emergence  of  new 
kinds  of  relationship  at  ever  higher  levels  in  that  process, 
as  may  be  indicated  by  the  terms  physico-chemical, 
vital,  and  mental.  Is  it  not  probable,  therefore,  that 
with  man  there  emerges  the  possibility  of  some  new  re- 
lationship— a  moral  linkage  with  that  which  is  ultimate 
in  the  Environment,  and  which  involves  wholeness  and 
persistence  of  spiritual  being — in  short,  that  individuality 
which  is  Immortality  ? 

1  This  is  a  reflex  of  certain  incidents  in  the  early  stages  of  the  Great 
War,  and  is  intended  to  convey  no  aspersion  upon  the  German  people 
or  army  as  a  whole  ;  nor  has  the  situation  been  confined  to  this  war  in 
particular,  nor  even  to  days  of  war. 

1  The  case  of  those  dying  in  infancy  presents  no  particular  difficulty 
on  this  view  ;  these  innocents  could  not  have  willed  themselves  out  of 
relationship  to  God. 


CHAPTER  XI 

EVOLUTION  AS  THE  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM 

OF  philosophies  of  Evolution  there  is  no  end,  some  of 
them  being  the  products  of  a  false  simplification  of  the 
facts.  There  is  little  wonder  if  the  human  mind  fails  in 
its  grasp  and  appreciation  of  the  facts  of  organic  develop- 
ment as  a  whole.  Nevertheless  it  becomes  increasingly 
clear  that  things  organic  and  inorganic  are,  because  of 
their  significance.  In  so  far  as  they  are  lacking  in  sig- 
nificance they  are  deficient  in  reality.  '  Evolution  itself,' 
in  Professor  G.  T.  Ladd's  words,  '  cannot  even  be  con- 
ceived of  except  in  connection  with  the  postulate  of  some 
Unitary  Being,  immanent  in  the  evolutionary  process, 
which  reveals  its  own  Nature  by  the  nature  of  the  Idea 
which,  in  fact,  is  progressively  set  into  reality  by  the 
process.' l 

Amongst  these  different  philosophies  of  Evolution,  that 
of  the  primordial  germ,  containing  within  it  the  promise 
and  potency  of  all  that  followed,  and  sifting  itself  out  in 
the  various  forms  of  life  through  the  passage  of  the  aeons, 
maintained  its  practically  unchallenged  place  through 
half  a  century.  To  a  biological  generation  that  is  just 
escaping  from  the  thraldom  of  the  Weismannian  dominion, 
and  wondering  how  it  ever  came  to  be  so  enslaved,  it  was 
only  logical  that  all  the  characters  of  later  forms  had  to 
be  traced  back  to  the  Protozoa,  and  thus  reduce  the 
theory  to  its  inevitable  absurdity  so  far  as  this  particular 
point  is  concerned.  Professor  Bateson's  later  modifica- 
tion, based  on  a  wide  range  of  brilliant  experimental 
research,  regards  Evolution  as  '  an  unpacking  of  an 

1  Knowledge,  Life,  and  Reality,  p.  522. 
234 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    235 

original  complex  which  contained  within  itself  the  whole 
range  of  diversity  which  living  things  present.' l  The 
outstanding  feature  about  both  of  these  views  is  that 
they  tend  to  regard  the  organism,  and  indeed  the  whole 
course  of  organic  evolution,  as  developing  so  mechani- 
cally as  practically  to  be  in  vacua .  Everything  is  given  ; 
acquired  modifications  are  not  transmitted ;  there  is  no 
real  enrichment  of  life  or  new  creation  ;  the  Environment 
has  little  more  than  a  stimulating  effect.  On  the  contrary, 
and  likewise  based  upon  experimental  and  observational 
data,  the  proof  is  slowly  accumulating,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  the  relationship  between  the  organism  and  its  En- 
vironment has  been  at  every  stage  so  close  that  we  more 
correctly  think  of  the  two  as  one  system  undergoing  change, 
and  that  the  Environment  has  been  a  directive  and  selec- 
tive agent  in  Evolution,  operating  throughout  upon  active 
responsive  agents,  whose  relation  to  it  has  become  in- 
creasingly intelligent.  It  is  very  difficult  to  suppose  that 
the  two  phases  in  the  individual  life  of  an  animal  like  the 
frog,  which  are  adaptations  to  two  very  different  sets  of 
environmental  conditions,  were  due  to  mutations  with 
the  production  of  which  these  different  sets  of  conditions 
had  nothing  directly  to  do  :  yet  this  is  what  the  former 
explanation  involves. 

Now  on  every  form  of  evolutionary  philosophy  it  has 
been  difficult  to  find  any  reasonable  explanation  of  that 
feature  of  Organic  Evolution  which  is  only  less  noticeable 
than  its  broadly  progressive  character,  viz.  the  instances 
of  retrogression,  of  apparently  harmful  adaptation,  of 
arrested  development,  and  those  particular  lines  of 
evolution  that  apparently  have  led  nowhere.  In  the 
recent  revolt,  however,  from  the  distinctively  mechanistic 
and  determinate  interpretations  of  the  evolutionary  pro- 
cess, no  fact  has  come  into  greater  prominence  than  the 
reality  of  the  living  organism  as  an  agent  in  its  own 
evolution.  Life  appears  as  a  continually  expansive, 
manifoldly  expressive  phenomenon,  and  all  along,  from 

1  Presidential  Address,  D.  A.  Report,  1914,  p.  17. 


236     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  beginning,  the  assertive,  often  rebellious,  living 
organism  has  manifestly  throughout  the  ages  been 
gradually  winning  ever  greater  freedom  from,  and  control 
over,  the  more  proximate  physical  aspects  of  the  Environ- 
ment. The  mere  fact  of  progress  shows  that  there  has 
been  a  tendency  to  break  away  from  the  limitations  of 
the  past.  Rudimentary  organs,  larval  forms,  every  new 
type  of  adaptation  and  variation,  each  an  evidence  of 
change,  all  testify  to  a  certain  degree  of  initiative  in 
freedom,  as  if  even  the  germ  cells  now  and  again  made 
essays  in  self-expression.1 

The  history  of  freedom,  then,  may  be  said  to  begin 
with  the  first  peculiar  or  special  reaction  or  activity 
of  the  simplest  organism  which  meant  some  new 
departure,  favourable  or  unfavourable,  first  in  its  own 
life,  and  so,  gradually,  in  the  expression  of  the  subse- 
quent different  forms  of  life.  These  earliest  steps 
were  probably  taken  while  life  was  yet  molecular  in 
structure,  but  even  in  that  condition  it  is  not  difficult 
to  realise  how  a  similar  stimulus  acting  upon  a  con- 
siderable number  of  such  living  molecules  may  have 
been  followed  by  a  peculiarity  of  reaction  in  some  one  or 
several  of  them,  that  fundamentally  affected  the  subse- 
quent course  of  their  existence.  Wherever  Life  is,  there 
is  indeterminism,  at  first  in  a  minimal  degree,  and  the 
history  of  Evolution  is  the  history  of  the  gradual  emanci- 
pation of  the  organism  from  the  physical  determinative 
aspects  of  the  Environment.  It  is  a  history  of  a  growing 
consciousness  of  such  emancipation,  until  in  moral 
freedom  it  becomes  the  peculiar  characteristic,  although 
in  very  varying  degrees,  of  man.  The  life-history  of  any 
organism  is  the  result  of  three  factors,  the  living  energy 
of  the  organism,  the  impressed  traits — so  many  latent 
possibilities — of  its  ancestral  past,  and  the  stimulating, 
directing,  and  actively  surrounding  Environment.  What 
actually  is  realised  depends  on  the  degree  of  individual 

1  Cf.  Prof.  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  The  System  of  Animate  Nature, 
vol.  i.  pp.  98,  326. 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    237 

activity  of  the  organism  itself — the  degree  in  which  it 
transcends,  or  liberates  itself,  so  to  speak,  from  its 
ancestral  past  and  from  the  compulsion  of  the  more 
physical  aspects  of  the  Environment.  Such  liberty  can 
never  be  complete  on  this  plane,  but  the  history  of  life 
shows  growing  emancipation  over  the  whole.  It  looks 
as  if  the  purpose  of  Evolution  were  to  create  free  beings 
in  the  world. 

This  tendency  towards  the  acquirement  of  freedom  may 
be  traced  in  connection  with  the  development  of  these 
psychophysical  centres  disclosed  by  the  study  alike  of 
comparative  anatomy  and  comparative  psychology.1 
From  the  sheer  determinism  of  the  inorganic  we  pass  to 
the  comparatively  simple  unicellular  forms  where,  just 
because  there  is  life,  there  is  a  certain  measure  of  inde- 
terminism.  In  mechanism  and  finalism  alike,  '  all  is 
given,'  although  it  may  be  hi  different  ways  :  in  life 
alone  there  is  the  indeterminate,  even  the  simplest 
organisms  bringing  to  the  '  given  '  which  they  represent, 
that  peculiar  activity  which,  in  the  past  as  in  the  present, 
may  mean  a  new  departure  in  life.  With  the  simplest 
forms,  whose  unicellular  body  is  at  once  the  unit  of 
function  and  of  structure,  and  is  in  the  most  direct 
relation  with  the  determining  environment,  it  seems  as 
if  there  were  a  total  powerlessness  in  relation  to  it  and 
a  dependence  upon  it  that  are  not  merely  the  result  of 
minute  physical  size.  It  is  not  bulk  alone  that  decides 
the  comparative  helplessness  of  the  protozoon  as  com- 
pared with  the  fish  in  the  stream,  for  it  is  obvious  that 
there  is  also  a  minimum  of  relation  between  these  simplest 
forms  themselves  :  they  have  next  to  no  knowledge  of 
themselves  or  one  another.  Indeed  nothing  seemed  more 
certain  to  the  earlier  observers  than  just  the  sheer  de- 
terminateness  of  protozoan  life  :  response  followed  on 
stimulus  with  mechanical  regularity,  and  only  that 
single  particular  response.  The  Environment  literally 

1  Reference  may  be  made  to  chapter  iv.  of  a  suggestive  work  entitled 
L'Evolution,  Doctrine  de  LiberU,  by  Prof.  F.  Leenhardt. 


238     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

controlled  and  determined  protozoan  life,  from  whose 
persistent  pressure  it  was  unable  to  get  free.  More 
exact  study  l  has  shown  that  the  life  of  the  protozoon  is 
not  thus  absolutely  bound,  that  on  the  contrary  such  a 
form  as  Stentor  will  try  at  least  half  a  dozen  different 
ways  of  responding  to  objectionable  or  injurious  stimuli, 
and  persists  in  trying,  till  relief  or  freedom  is  obtained 
from  the  particular  situation.  Professor  Jennings'  years 
of  study  of  the  behaviour  of  the  lowest  organisms  have 
shown  '  that  in  these  creatures  the  behaviour  is  not  as  a 
rule  on  the  tropism  plan — a  set,  forced  method  of  reacting 
to  each  particular  agent — but  takes  place  in  a  much  more 
flexible,  less  directly  machine-like  way,  by  the  method  of 
trial  and  error.'  *  '  In  no  other  group  of  organisms,' 
ho  says, '  does  the  method  of  trial  and  error  so  completely 
dominate  behaviour,  perhaps,  as  in  the  infusoria ' 3 
(ciliate  Protozoa) ;  something  of  the  nature  of  mind  has 
counted  from  the  beginning. 

A  progressive  study  of  the  forms  of  life  shows  that  with 
each  advance  a  greater  degree  of  freedom  is  obtained. 
Thus  Jennings,4  for  example,  made  friends  with  a  starfish, 
and  spent  a  considerable  amount  of  time — eighteen  days 
with  ten  lessons  per  day — in  successfully  training  it  to 
use  two  particular  rays  in  the  process  of  turning  itself 
over,  after  being  placed  upon  its  back.  The  pair  of  rays 
hi  question  had  never  been  observed  to  be  ordinarily 
employed  by  this  individual  for  this  purpose.  After  a 
forty-eight  hours'  vacation  the  starfish  still  used  this 
particular  pair  more  frequently  than  any  other  combina- 
tion. Even  after  a  further  five  days'  rest,  or  seven  in  all, 
without  any  further  training,  the  influence  of  its  past 
education  was  still  noticeable.  Starfish  have  no  concen- 
tration of  nervous  elements  even  into  ganglia,  and  yet 
are  just  as  variable  in  their  learning  abilities  as  many 

1  Cf.  e.g.  Prof.  H.  S.  Jennings'  Behaviour  of  the  Lower  Organisms. 
The  quotations  are  from  his  earlier  Contributions  to  the  Study  of  the 
Behaviour  of  the  Lower  Organisms. 

I  Op.  cit.  p.  252.  •  Op.  cit.  p.  243.  4  Ibid. 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    939 

higher  organisms.  Similarly  R.  M.  Yerkes,1  after  giving 
instruction  to  an  earthworm  from  October  12,  1911,  to 
April  30, 1912,  by  means  of  an  apparatus  devised  to  test 
its  ability  to  '  learn '  to  follow  a  simple  path  so  as  to 
avoid  an  injurious  stimulation,  succeeded  in  getting 
positive  results.  Objective  study  discloses  that  in  the 
method  of  '  trial  and  error,'  as  evinced  in  the  behaviour 
of  lower  organisms — and  the  whole  search  for  food  may 
be  included  under  this  category — '  error '  implies  that 
which  is  injurious  to  them,  and  so  eventually  to  the  race. 
Exactly  the  same  types  of  reaction  objectively  regarded, 
occur  in  the  higher  animals  :  subjectively  we  know  that 
the  stimuli  causing  these  negative  reactions  are  accom- 
panied by  what  we  speak  of  as  pain.  It  is  difficult  to 
avoid  the  conclusion  that  there  is  some  '  organic  analogue 
of  pain  '  or  pleasure  in  the  lower  organisms. 

In  the  simplest  multicellular  forms  function  is  already 
located  in  distinct  organs,  and  with  the  division  of  labour 
thereby  effected,  which  in  its  turn  means  so  much  in- 
creased capacity  for  doing  work,  following  on  the  increased 
specialisation  and  centralisation  in  these  organs,  greater 
independence  is  secured.  In  itself,  the  acquisition  of 
sight,  developed  out  of  a  sensory  spot  in  the  epithelium, 
every  stage  of  which  can  be  traced,  meant  an  incalculable 
advance  in  the  development  of  individuality  and  the 
winning  of  independence,  for  with  it  came  the  possibility 
of  a  more  distinct  conception  than  mere  touch  could 
afford,  of  that  which  is  other  than  the  perceiving  subject. 
The  evolution  of  the  nervous  system — the  organ  of 
relationship — can  be  clearly  traced  2  out  of  a  series  of 
isolated  ganglia  enervating  local  regions  of  the  body, 
which  by  their  gradual  linkage  and  centralisation  in  a 
'  brain '  bring  the  various  local  centres  of  the  body  into 
relationship,  so  that  it  responds  henceforward  as  a  whole. 
At  a  still  later  stage,  as  the  result  of  increasing  growth 

1  'The  Intelligence  of  Earthworms,'  Journal  of  Animal  Behaviour, 
vol.  ii.  no.  5. 

1  Cf.  e.g.  Prof.  G.  H.  Parker,  The  Elementary  Nervous  System. 


240     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

in  the  association  centres  of  the  brain,  in  connection  with 
which  the  past  is  in  some  way  enregistered,  subsequent 
responses  have  no  longer  the  direct  immediate  character 
of  a  reflex  or  tropism,  but  that  typical  reaction  modified 
by  the  experience  of  the  past. 

The  brain  is  thus  an  organ  which,  by  its  enregistration 
of  the  actions  and  reactions  provoked  by  the  Environ- 
ment and  the  peripheral  nervous  system,  and  its  recom- 
bination of  them  in  new  and  more  complex  association, 
permits  of  the  organism  expressing  itself  in  some  new 
and  unforeseen  way,  and  in  that  degree  manifesting  its 
independence.  And  not  merely  does  the  organism  ex- 
hibit these  new  actions  and  reactions,  but  it  behaves  at 
times  in  such  a  way  as  to  suggest  that  it  can  do  so  more 
or  less  at  its  pleasure,  indicating  that  not  merely  has  it 
a  power  of  inhibition,  but  can  also  in  a  measure  initiate 
activity  of  itself,  and  is  in  that  degree  autonomous  and 
self-determining.  The  higher  organisms  gradually  sub- 
stitute internal  for  external  stimuli,  the  former  being 
in  great  part  the  summed  results  of  previous  experience 
of  the  latter.  Associated  with  the  highest  development 
of  this  cerebro-psychic  centre  is  a  suggestion  of  individu- 
ality and  wholeness,  and  of  self-assertive  independence 
especially,  to  begin  with,  of  the  physical  aspects  of  the 
Environment.  This  development  has,  of  course,  taken 
place  particularly  in  the  vertebrates,  where  the  various 
stages  in  the  winning  of  increasing  independence  are  well 
marked.  Thus  while  the  cold-blooded  vertebrates  are  so 
directly  dependent  on  the  environmental  temperature 
that  their  functioning  rises  and  falls  in  correspondence 
with  it,  the  warm-blooded  vertebrates,  as  it  were,  carry 
their  own  weather  about  with  them  in  the  form  of  their 
uniform  high  internal  temperature,  and  are  thus  inde- 
pendent to  a  marked  degree  of  the  vagaries  and  sustained 
extremes  alike,  of  external  climate.  The  cold-blooded 
forms  are  historically  older  than  the  warm-blooded : 
there  is  thus  in  this  related  aspect  also  a  marked  advance 
in  independence  with  the  evolution  of  life.  No  pheno- 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    241 

menon  of  organic  functioning  is  more  individual  and  less 
susceptible  of  complete  explanation  in  terms  of  physics 
and  chemistry  alone,  than  the  process  by  which  the  highest 
warm-blooded  forms  maintain  their  temperature  at  what 
is  virtually  a  specific  constant  for  each  individual. 

A  detailed  comparative  study  of  the  phylogenetic 
development  of  the  central  nervous  system  shows  that 
each  advance  has  led  towards  the  gradual  association  of 
supremacy,  in  the  sense  of  the  co-ordination  and  control 
of  life,  with  the  cerebral  hemispheres,  more  especially 
with  the  cortical  area  or  neopallium.  Not  merely  have 
modern  species  of  reptiles  a  greater  brain  capacity  on  the 
whole  than  the  Mesozoic  representatives  of  these  particular 
species,  and  modern  mammals  than  the  corresponding 
species  of  Tertiary  days,  but  there  has  been  the  absolute 
advance  in  the  various  types  of  Primate  brain.  Life  could 
probably  have  maintained  itself  in  automatic  subsistence 
at  any  particular  level,  but  the  actual  observed  advance 
in  complexity  of  cerebral  structure,  being  the  concomitant 
of  increased  activity,  power  of  adaptation,  and  ability 
through  new  responses  to  surmount  new  and  difficult 
environmental  experiences  that  might  otherwise  have 
meant  extinction,  looks  as  if  this  progress  had  been  part 
of  a  purposive  possibility,  an  intention  of  something  higher. 
The  increased  cerebral  development  involves  in  some  way 
a  wider  and  more  complex  range  of  enregistration  and 
combination  of  action  and  reaction,  and  so,  through  the 
presence  of  alternatives,  of  choice.  In  the  highest  forms 
of  all,  this  independence  becomes  most  marked,  for  not 
merely  is  there  considered  response  to  stimuli  in  the 
light  of  past  experience,  but  there  appears  to  be  evidence 
of  the  initiative  directly  proceeding  from  this  cerebro- 
psychic  centre  without  the  previous  immediate  impact 
of  some  external  stimulus.  Thus  Leenhardt  draws 
attention  J  to  the  fact  that  the  brain  sends  out  centrifugal 
fibres  into  the  sensorial  elements  of  the  sense  organs,  e.g. 
the  plexus  of  the  retina,  and  apparently  has  the  power 
1  Op.  cit.  p.  65. 
Q 


242     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

of  directly  increasing  the  impressionability  of  these 
receptive  organs,  if  not  of  putting  them  into  this 
condition  even  in  the  absence  of  all  external  stimulation. 
Now  it  is  in  the  misuse  of  this  capacity  to  win  freedom, 
this  process  in  which  the  organism  as  an  active  agent  has 
increasingly  and  gradually  throughout  historic  time 
become  a  factor  in  its  own  elevation,  that  it  is  possible 
to  find  a  reasonable  explanation  of  the  irregularities, 
impasses,  retrogressions,  and  dysteleologies  that  become 
evident  in  the  course  of  Evolution.  But  while  this  may 
be  true  of  forms  that  are  apparently  organic  culs-de-sac 
or  actually  degenerate,  yet  it  would  obviously  be  a  mis- 
reading of  the  facts  to  class  as  dysteleological  all  forms 
of  life  that  failed  to  maintain  themselves  in  the  narrow 
upward  way  that  led  to  man's  estate.  No  one  could  thus 
think  of  the  plant  world  as  a  whole,  or  numerous  groups 
(e.g.  herbivores)  in  the  regimented  forms  of  animal  life. 
In  themselves,  such  as  they  are,  they  have  proved  essential 
to  the  higher  forms,  in  a  sense  doing  them  service.  Man 
could  not  have  evolved  if  every  other  form  of  life  had 
consistently  progressed  towards  humanity.  Nature  has 
many  ends,  and  the  conception  of  teleology  only  becomes 
the  more  profound. 

Man,  as  the  present  terminus  ad  quern  of  the  vertebrate 
series,  gives  a  meaning,  which  is  otherwise  lacking,  to  the 
whole  of  the  preceding  stages.  He  is  directly  linked  with 
them,  and  the  tendency  noticeable  throughout,  towards 
the  winning  of  liberty  and  the  development  of  an  increas- 
ingly self-activated  centre,  reaches  its  highest  expression 
in  him.  Individuality  has  reached  a  stage  in  which 
general  awareness  has  now  become  awareness  of  self. 
What  exactly  was  the  nature  and  manner  of  the  last 
advance  we  do  not  entirely  know.  The  study  of  even 
the  highest  type  of  purely  animal  brain  is  always  limited 
by  the  fact  of  the  indirectness  of  such  study,  although  it 
becomes  increasingly  apparent  that  we  have  far  from 
exhausted  the  mental  capacities  of  those  mammalian 
forms  that  have  been  longest  and  most  directly  associated 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    243 

with  man,  e.g.  dog  and  horse,  while  those  of  the  simian 
group  have  hardly  been  investigated  at  all.  No  naturalist 
doubts  that  the  rudiments  of  every  feature  in  the  mental 
organisation  of  man  exist  in  the  cerebro-psychic  centre  of 
the  higher  animals  :  there  is  even  an  elemental  self- 
consciousness  in  the  negative  sense  that  the  animal 
recognises  others  of  its  kind  as  distinct  from,  and  other 
than,  itself.  But  the  clearest  proof  of  this  development 
is  seen  in  the  recapitulated  life-history  of  each  human 
individual,  in  which  the  passage  is  made  in  every  case  in 
early  childhood  from  proconsciousness  through  conscious- 
ness to  self-consciousness.  There  are,  for  example,  the 
months  in  which  the  child  persistently  speaks  of  itself  in 
the  third  person,  not  having  as  yet  attained  to  vital  con- 
sciousness of  self.  As  also  indeed  there  is  the  still  earlier, 
and  as  yet  little  studied,  history,  mainly  instinctive  and 
full  of  simple,  reflex  actions,  not  to  speak  of  the  embryonic 
and  germ-cell  stages,  in  which  even  Socrates  must  have 
reacted  simply  as  a  germ  cell,  although  the  limitations  of 
our  conventional  thought  have  hitherto  refused  to  be 
interested  in  the  thought  of  him  at  this  earliest  period. 

In  the  case  of  man  this  liberty  of  independence  is 
shown  supremely  as  the  result  of  will,  or,  in  other  words, 
the  integrated  system  of  the  mind  in  action.  Such 
activity  is  thus  seen  by  its  racial  development  to  be  the 
most  central  and  deep-rooted  aspect  of  the  life  of  the 
organism,  amounting  in  man  to  a  virtual,  although  as  yet 
only  partial,  self-determination.  The  internal  motives  and 
springs  of  action  are  in  himself,  moulding  and  making  the 
self.  If,  as  on  a  misleading  analogy  it  is  sometimes  stated, 
there  is  a  struggle  between  conflicting  motives  in  which 
the  stronger  wins,  it  is  the  man  after  all  who  decides  which 
shall  be  the  stronger.  The  reasons  for  his  action  are 
ultimately  of  his  own  making.  But  towards  this  de"noue- 
ment  the  whole  of  the  racial  past  has  contributed  and 
moved  in  preparation.  Without  that  past,  both  indi- 
vidual and  racial  alike,  the  freedom  to  decide  at  any 
specific  moment  would  not  be  what  it  is.  In  this  sense 


244     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

man  is  literally  the  heir  of  all  the  ages.  In  his  brain 
there  is  enregistered  something  of  the  experience  of  the 
past,  for  the  cerebro-psychic  centre  has  throughout  con- 
stituted itself  a  synthesis  of  the  actions  and  reactions  and 
the  method  of  life  or  habits  based  on,  and  resulting  from 
them,  in  the  age-long  history.  The  Freudian  may  or 
may  not  be  right  in  tracing  '  the  occasional  dreams  one 
has  of  falling  through  space  with  the  violent  instinctive 
effort  often  undergone  to  prevent  disastrous  conse- 
quences,' 1  to  enregistered  reminiscences  of  arboreal  life  ; 
but  the  suggestion  of  continuity  and  of  the  impact  and 
reverberation,  so  to  speak,  of  waking  experience,  at  any 
rate,  through  the  whole  being,  is  sound.  These  registered 
experiences  and  infinite  possibilities  constitute  the 
material  out  of  which  the  developing  organism  realises 
itself  and  becomes  itself,  as  the  result  of  its  own  activity, 
freeing  itself  from  bondage  to  the  past  and  the  immediate 
Environment  or  allying  itself  with  the  best  it  finds  in 
both.  Apparently  the  highest  mammalian  forms,  from 
whose  type  of  brain  the  human  brain  has  been  developed 
by  gradual  stages,  regard  the  external  world  in  much  the 
same  general  way  as  man,  for  they  react  to  it  in  the 
same  way.  But  in  his  case  internal  motives,  ideas,  and 
reactions,  stored  as  the  result  of  the  marked  development 
of  the  cerebral  hemispheres  and  contributing  to  a  basis 
for  self-activity,  come  more  and  more  to  play  the  deter- 
mining part,  in  contrast  to  immediate  purely  external 
stimulation,  although  ultimately  even  these  internal 
stimuli  can  all  be  traced  to  experience  of  something 
spiritual  and  active  in  that  Environment. 

In  the  long,  sub-human  stages  of  life  there  has  been 
from  the  beginning  undoubtedly  an  urge  or  push  towards 
ever  higher  manifestations  of  life.  The  method  followed 
is  one  whereby  the  creature's  own  activity  becomes  in- 
creasingly a  definite  factor  in  its  evolution;  pain  and 
physical  evil  represent  the  results  in  great  part  of 
inefficient  adaptation,  poor  reaction,  or  violation  of  what 

1  Prof.  R.  S.  Lull,  Organic  Evolution,  p.  667. 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    245 

has  been  found  to  be  a  successful  mode  of  living — in 
short,  of  misuse  of  growing  freedom — and  often  involve 
arrest  in  development,  actual  degeneration  and  elimi- 
nation. At  the  same  time,  these  identical  conditions 
have  also  had  the  effect  of  stimulating  other  forms  in  the 
direction  of  some  new  line  of  development,  an  activity 
which  has  had  a  mutual  effect  on  the  cerebro-psychic 
centre,  registering  and  consolidating  the  results  of  this 
new  activity.  The  capacity  for  pain  and  suffering,  which 
has  been  an  accompaniment  of  the  process  throughout, 
also  bears  a  direct  relation  to  the  development  of  the 
central  nervous  system.1  When  man  began  to  be  con- 
scious of  himself  and  of  the  character  of  the  process  as  a 
whole,  the  higher  degree  of  independence  which  was  his, 
although  a  direct  development  of  the  growing  self-activity 
of  the  sub-human  forms  of  life,  became  a  real  moral 
liberty,  at  least  in  possibility.  The  essential  development 
throughout  the  course  of  life  has  been  that  of  the 
cerebro-psychic  centre  with  which  in  the  end  has  come 
to  be  directly  associated  the  expression  of  even  the  moral 
life  of  man. 

The  evolutionary  process  comes  to  an  end  in  man,  a 
being  peculiarly  conscious  of  himself,  independent,  self 
active,  and  self-determining  as  is  no  other  organism  in 
creation,  '  the  master  of  his  fate,  the  captain  of  his 
soul.'  Typically  these  are  the  possibilities,  although  in 
very  varying  degrees  of  actual  realisation.  But  in  our 
ordinary  associations  with  the  word  '  man,'  we  envisage 
a  stage  that  is  too  abruptly  separated  from  the  higher 
animals.  It  is  really  necessary  to  make  objective  and 
concrete  to  ourselves  the  stage  corresponding  to  the 
Pliocene  Homosimius  and  even  earlier — at  present  theo- 
retical, but  of  which  the  actual  proofs  will  one  day  be 
in  our  hands — represented  to-day  in  mentality  by  the 
child  of  tenderest  years,  and  think  of  this  stage,  imme- 
diately above  the  higher  mammals,  as  that  of  the  sub- 
personal  animal.  It  is  the  stage,  long  enough  doubtless 

1  Cf.  The  Spiritual  Interpretation  of  Nature,  pp.  154-160. 


246     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

in  the  racial  history,  though  brief  in  the  recapitulated 
individual  history  of  to-day,  when  Homosimius  was 
gradually  arriving  at  ever  fuller  consciousness  of  himself, 
gaining  it  perhaps  for  a  moment  and  losing  it  again 
temporarily  in  the  manifold  activities  of  life  on  the  purely 
animal  plane.  But  once  permanently  gained,  that  asser- 
tion of  the  self,  particularly  as  it  came  to  be  opposed  in 
thought  to  the  conception  of  an  object  other  than  self, 
and  so  standing,  when  fully  developed,  in  contrast  with 
the  mental  equipment  of  a  lower  mammal,  seems  like  a 
new  creation.  This  affirmation  of  the  self  is  the  origin 
of  a  whole  new  series  of  relations  amongst  the  elements 
accumulated  in  the  cerebro-psychic  centre.  It  is  to  this 
stage  that  racially  and  individually  the  origins  of  speech, 
doubtless  monosyllabic  at  first,  are  referable,  and  it  is 
not  difficult  to  see  how  by  its  expression  and  fixation  of 
ideas,  the  latter  were  given  a  certain  independence  and 
objective  existence  which  made  intercourse  and  progress 
possible  in  a  manner  hitherto  unrealisable.  When  self- 
consciousness  has  come  to  full  and  clear  cognisance,  and 
the  animal  self -activity  has  become  conscious  liberty,  the 
sub-personal  animal  stage  has  passed  over  into  that  of 
man. 

It  is  now  many  years  since  Fiske  drew  attention  to 
the  significance  of  the  long  period  of  human  gestation 
and  infancy,1  not  merely  in  the  development  of  family 
life,  but  in  the  development  of  the  individual  life.  Man 
comes  into  the  world  with  his  brain  relatively  less 
developed  than  that  of  any  other  mammal.  It  is  indeed 
remarkably  adapted  to  the  extended  period  of  infancy, 
while  that  of  the  higher  animals  is  practically  ready 
for  complete  functioning  from  the  moment  of  birth. 
The  facts  almost  look  as  if  there  were  some  deliberate 
intention  that  the  developing  self  or  personality  should 
have  the  principal  share  in  the  later  moulding  of  its 
instrument  of  expression,  and  certainly  it  is  only  in  the 
measure  in  which  it  has  had  a  hand,  so  to  speak,  in  the 

1  John  Fiske,  Man's  Destiny,  pp.  35-57. 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    247 

shaping  of  itself  that  responsibility  can  be  attributed  to 
it.  In  this  way  there  is  an  evident  method  for  the 
development  of  distinct  personalities,  or  individuality 
in  the  ordinary  sense  of  that  term.  The  development 
of  personality  has  consisted  in  the  gradual  conscious 
appropriation  and  assimilation  by  an  increasingly  asser- 
tive self,  conscious  of  itself,  and  in  continuous  reaction 
with  the  Environment,  of  all  the  innumerable  elements 
stored  in  the  cerebro-psychic  centre  of  the  sub-personal 
animal  which  are  primarily  the  elements  of  the  sub- 
conscious life  of  the  self.  In  this  growing  recognition  and 
establishment  of  a  self  as  a  spiritual  centre  of  initiation  and 
determination,  man  rises  historically  above  the  stage  of 
the  sub-personal  animal,  much  as  to-day  he  develops 
individually  out  of  the  infant.  Of  that  long  stage  we 
have  already  outlined  what  is  known  about  the  develop- 
ment both  of  the  cortical  areas  and  of  the  lower  jaw, 
with  the  implications  of  a  rudimentary  tongue,  and 
an  incipient  capacity  for  speech  in  Early  Pleistocene 
man  and  even  his  predecessors.  But  throughout  the 
whole  history,  as  the  direct  consequence  of  the  growing 
independence,  the  course  of  evolution  has  never  been 
representable  by  a  direct  line  of  progress  moving  as  a 
whole  unerringly  towards  some  specific  end,  but  rather 
by  a  general  direction  and  tendency,  often  thwarted 
indeed  and  lost  in  many  details,  full  of  detours  and 
deviations,  yet  always  represented  in  some  forms,  that 
contrived  to  keep  in  the  narrow  upward  way.  To  them, 
in  the  midst  of  the  process,  the  fact  of  progress  would 
have  often  seemed  obscure  for  long  periods  at  a  time, 
even  had  thej>  had  the  ability  to  reflect  on  its  character 
in  that  particular  early  phase  in  which  they  lived. 

Of  the  later  stages  in  this  winning  of  independence 
it  is  unnecessary  for  our  purpose  to  supply  further  detail. 
Most  interesting  of  all,  as  we  have  seen,  is  that  one  in 
which  the  animal  with  incipient  personality,  or  Homo- 
simius,  evolved  into  the  distinctive  man.  The  struggle 
with  the  forces  of  nature,  the  growing  sense  of  need,  the 


248     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

realisation  of  the  efficacy  of  team  work  and  social  life 
generally,  all  following  on  the  development  of  reason,  with 
the  power  to  form  conceptions,  constituted  various  ele- 
ments in  the  process.  How  closely  the  development  of 
these  characters  was  related  to  the  power  of  speech  is 
evidenced,  as  Leenhardt  points  out,  by  the  double  meaning 
of  the  Greek  word  '  logos.'  1  The  use  of  fire,  utensils, 
arms,  agriculture,  the  keeping  of  domestic  animals, 
roughly  represent  different  stages  in  this  progressive 
conquest  of  Nature,  this  greater  freedom  which  came 
from  knowledge  and  obedience  to  the  laws  and  rhythms 
discovered.  It  is  a  movement  in  the  midst  of  which 
man  stands  to-day,  still  growing  towards  fuller  person- 
ality, becoming  progressively  free.  With  the  invention 
of  writing,  the  experience  of  previous  generations  became 
available  for  their  successors,  and  the  loneliness  and 
isolation  of  the  greater  minds  of  the  race  were  at  an  end. 
If  their  immediate  followers  did  not  understand  them, 
it  now  became  possible  for  them  to  find  appreciation  in  a 
wider  circle.  The  holding  or  binding  elements  in  the 
social  structure  were  in  the  beginning,  as  throughout,  how- 
ever, the  moral  and  religious  elements.  But  the  method 
of  evolution  has  continued  the  same,  and  the  evidence  of 
history  shows  that  the  evolution  of  the  higher  mammals, 
characterised  by  the  acquirement  of  their  typical 
cerebro-psychic  centre,  has  issued  in  the  evolution  of 
humanity,  which  in  turn  is  growingly  characterised  by 
the  formation  of  a  society  of  personalities  developing 
along  ethical  lines.  Organic  evolution  is  supplemented 
by  ethical  evolution,  and  in  this  connection  the  altruistic 
factor  has  played  an  increasingly  important  part.  Just 
as  surely  as  mental  development  was  the  characteristic 
feature  of  mammalian  evolution,  so  is  ethical  develop- 
ment the  characteristic  feature  of  human  evolution  first 
racially  and  then  individually.  It  is  outlined  in  the 
gradual  replacement  of  the  wandering  tribe  by  the  settled 
group,  developing  the  more  productive  and  constructive 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  107. 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    249 

sides  of  primitive  civilisation,  as  by  a  social  environment 
in  which  the  conception  of  rights,  and  law,  and  the  family 
became  more  securely  fixed,  for  these  groups  alone  tended 
to  survive. 

To-day  man  is  a  being  possessed  of  a  high  degree  of 
conscious  activity,  with  great  possibilities  of  mastery  of 
himself  and  of  Nature.  There  is  no  doubt  of  his  success 
in  the  latter  field,  but  calm  consideration  of  the  results  of 
history  compels  us  to  admit  that  this  ethical  progress 
which  would  issue  in  complete  mastery  of  himself,  has  not 
kept  pace  with  his  psychical  development.  It  becomes 
evident,  when  we  consider  the  products  of  the  human 
spirit  in  art  and  science,  that  man's  intellectual  develop- 
ment has  outrun  his  moral  development ;  the  former  in 
itself  has  little  power  to  produce  the  latter.  Man  may 
attain  to  a  high  degree  of  mastery  over  Nature  without 
having  secured  any  corresponding  control  of  himself. 
Very  little  observation  shows  that  neither  science  nor 
philosophy,  intelligence  nor  any  form  of  human  power, 
necessarily  carries  with  it  mastery  of  the  self,  or  has  the 
ability  to  set  man  free  from  bondage  to  the  physical  or 
mental  characteristics  that  he  has  inherited.  The  latter 
are  elements  or  instruments  that  may  be  used  by  the  self 
hi  strengthening  that  affirmation  in  virtue  of  which  man 
made  the  advance  upon  the  purely  animal  stage  ;  they 
may  also  be  so  used  that  in  the  end  the  self  tends  to  be 
lost  or  submerged.  In  a  general  way,  in  the  public  control 
of  morals  and  in  education,  a  standard  is  set  which, 
however,  as  yet  to  a  very  slight  degree  affects  that  self- 
mastery  in  the  individual  life  which  is  the  evident  aim, 
the  inherent  possibility  in  every  human  life. 

The  stage  of  Homosimius,  the  sub-personal  animal, 
is  reached  by  a  measure  of  gradual  personalisation  of  the 
psychical  inheritance  received  from  the  representatives 
of  the  previous  stage,  and  this  has  gone  on  assisted  by 
the  further  advances  secured  by  the  initial  development 
of  language,  and  even  the  use  of  the  hands.  The 
complete  dominance  of  all  these  inherited  ideas  and 


250     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

impulses,  the  mastery  of  the  developing  self  over  all 
these  elements  and  itself  alike — that  relative  goal 
towards  which  the  whole  evolutionary  process  seems  to 
be  intended  to  move — is,  however,  far  from  established, 
is  indeed  only  now  in  process  of  being  worked  out.  As 
yet  in  multitudes  of  instances,  the  incipient  self,  so  far 
from  being  master,  is  dominated  by  the  products  of  its 
own  activity  in  the  regions  of  the  mind,  some  of  them 
wakened  into  activity  from  their  enregistration  during  the 
ancestral  past,  others  due  to  new  and  fresh  combinations 
of  these  elements.  As  a  matter  of  simple  fact  man  has, 
as  a  whole,  as  yet  evolved  but  a  very  slight  distance  in  the 
direction  of  real  and  perfect  manhood  :  he  is  just  a  very 
little  way  beyond  the  stage  of  the  higher  mammal,  whose 
action  is  characterised,  as  Leenhardt  well  remarks,1  by 
the  predominance  of  psychical  automatism  in  place  of 
genuinely  voluntary  and  conscious  activity,  always 
desired  and  approved  by  the  self.  In  man,  at  the  stage 
of  his  present  evolution,  there  is  still  to  a  large  extent  a 
higher-grade  automatism  of  action  that  is  opposed  to  that 
complete  mastery  and  possession — that  final  liberty — of 
the  self  which  would  appear  to  be  the  end  of  evolution. 
Man,  growingly  intelligent  and  free  in  his  actions,  yet 
finds  that  that  very  acquisition  of  self-consciousness  in 
virtue  of  which  he  developed  out  of  the  sub-human  stage 
is  in  itself  not  unified  or  harmonised.  St.  Paul  describes 
this  phenomenon  in  the  moral  aspect  in  his  passage  about 
the  two  laws  warring  in  his  members  <;  z  Ovid  knew  the 
experience  ;  3  Greek  tragedy  is  based  upon  it.4  In  another 
aspect  we  have  the  same  phenomenon  in  the  psychical 
and  pathological  cases  of  dual  personality,  which  in  less 
advanced  forms  are  much  more  common  than  is  ordinarily 
supposed.  In  every  man,  in  fact,  to  some  extent  there 
are  a  Doctor  Jekyll  and  a  Mr.  Hyde.  His  mental  life 
may  be  distributed  between  two  or  even  more  secondary 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  115.  2  Rom.  7  23. 

3  'Video  meliora  proboque,  deteriora  sequor,'  (Metam.,  vii.  20). 

4  e.g.  Euripides,  Hippol.,  380  ff. 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    251 

selves  ;  there  is  as  yet  no  real  attainment  of  individuality. 
Man  is  still  only  on  the  way  towards  self -harmony  and 
individuality,  and  his  journey  is  a  series  of  struggles 
against  these  secondary  centres  for  the  establishment 
of  unity  and  control.  Such  complete  and  permanent 
control,  in  full  self-consciousness,  of  his  whole  psychical 
inheritance  from  the  higher  animals,  as  also  of  these  new 
elements  that  result  from  his  own  mental  activity  as 
man,  would  constitute  true  mastery  of  the  self.  It  would 
mean  that  he  would  repress  those  elements  that  were 
unfavourable  to  his  moral  advance,  and  favour  and  con- 
firm these  that  were  useful,  and  in  this  way  make  of  him- 
self, by  continual  definite  and  fully  conscious  acts  of  will, 
a  spiritual  organism  of  which  he  would  be  completely 
master,  and  as  the  result  of  which  he  would  be  better 
able  to  achieve  that  in  himself  and  for  others  which  his 
reading  of  the  world  process  indicates  to  him  as  its  end. 
At  this  stage  humanity  has  not  arrived.  We  see  indeed 
that  while  amongst  the  most  civilised  peoples  there  is 
evidence  of  movement  towards  a  greater  deliverance  of 
humanity  from  the  organic,  intellectual  or  social  servi- 
tudes that  bound  humanity  at  its  first  appearance,  and 
still  binds  its  more  backward  sections,1  even  in  the  best 
individual  lives,  which  ought  ever  to  be  in  advance  of 
those  of  the  masses  of  mankind,  there  is  even  as  yet  but 
an  approximation  towards  this  complete  self-mastery, 
independence  and  individuality. 

In  these  earlier  stages  of  humanity,  out  of  which  we  are 
just  beginning  to  emerge,  man  has  on  the  whole  tended 
rather  to  be  a  passive  participant  in  his  evolution,  in  a 
considerably  less  degree,  of  course,  than  his  animal  pre- 
decessors, yet  apparently  interested  more  in  the  assertion 
than  in  the  control  of  the  self,  and  living  his  life  to  a  great 
degree  on  that  level  of  organic  and  psychical  activity  which 
characterised  the  immediately  preceding  stage.  But  now 
with  the  ability  to  read,  and  reflect  upon,  the  process  of 
which  he  is  a  product,  and  to  set  aims  steadily  before  his 
1  Leenhardt,  op.  cit.  p.  117. 


252     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

mind,  his  part  in  the  assistance  of  the  process  ought  to 
become  more  active  and  intelligent,  and  his  duty  to 
achieve  its  end  in  himself  more  clear  and  binding.  Indeed 
his  realisation  of  a  purpose  in  the  process  is  just  what  in 
great  part  constitutes  the  Ought  for  him.  He  may  see 
the  purpose  in  things  and  be  conscious  of  it  in  many  ways, 
but  until  he  acts  in  such  a  way  that  his  life  expresses 
what  he  believes  that  purpose  to  be,  he  has  not  aligned 
his  will  with  his  knowledge. 

In  the  case  of  this  sense  of  duty  and  responsibility,  we 
have  characters  of  which  adumbrations  can  be  recognised 
in  the  animal  world,  although  principally  in  connection 
with  those  forms  that  have  been  closely  associated  with 
man.  Thus  the  dog  to  which  some  object  has  been  en- 
trusted, or  which  shows  signs  of  '  repentance,'  in  that 
degree,  manifests  a  glimmer  of  a  moral  sense.  There 
is,  of  course,  in  its  case  no  abstract  idea  of  responsi- 
bility, and  the  tokens  are  only  developed  in  presence  of 
some  concrete  object  or  situation  relative  to  man,  and 
never  as  between  dogs  alone.  Nevertheless,  at  whatever 
stage  in  the  ascent  of  man  this  sense  of  obligation  began 
to  be  defined  in  his  mind,  it  was  of  the  nature  of  an  urge 
or  stimulus  to  development  comparable  to  the  sense  of 
need  on  a  lower  plane  of  animality,  or  the  inherited 
tendencies  on  the  psychical  plane  in  the  case  of  the  higher 
mammals.  On  the  ethical  plane  this  urge  becomes  obli- 
gation, and  is  in  evidence  with  the  moment  when  the 
sub-personal  animal  or  Homosimius  first  begins  to  realise 
that  he  ought  to  be  master  of  himself.  But  the  question 
inevitably  follows  on  any  sincere  reflection  upon  the 
course  of  things  as  to  how  far  man — who  has  in  the 
course  of  his  evolution  developed  the  ability  to  resolve 
upon,  and  carry  out  this  or  that  external  activity — 
has  developed  at  the  same  time  the  power  of  self- 
determination  and  control,  enabling  him  to  become 
that  which  he  wishes  to  be  in  his  real  and  inmost 
being.  It  is  possible  that  there  is  a  type  of  self- 
satisfaction  to  which  such  a  consideration  will  be  un- 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    253 

welcome.  But  evolution  has  never  been  through  the 
self-satisfied,  or  those  completely  conformed  to  the 
Environment  of  the  moment.  The  fact  that  he  has  not 
become  completely  individual,  independent,  master  of 
himself  is  testified  to  by  the  question  itself :  he  has  not 
yet  reached  a  perfected  or  complete  humanity.  He  is 
still  in  great  measure  in  bondage  to  his  organism,  however 
that  organism  may  mark  an  advance  upon  that  of  the 
higher  animals.  This  seems  to  be  the  testimony  of  man 
at  his  best,  i.e.  in  his  moments  of  greatest  independence 
and  self-mastery,  to-day.  The  higher  course  appeals  ; 
man  feels  that  he  ought  to  follow  it  just  because  he  feels 
he  has  the  possibility  within  him  of  being  something 
better  than  he  is.  It  is  the  testimony  of  humanity  itself 
to  its  incomplete,  if  not  arrested,  development :  in  some 
instances  there  is  all  too  evident  degeneration.  Humanity 
is  not  that  which  it  might  have  been  or  ought  to  be,  or 
in  its  highest  representatives  wishes  to  be.  This  missing 
of  the  mark,  this  failure  to  advance  by  self-mastery  as 
the  result  of  a  personal  activity  directed  by  that  internal 
conscience  or  higher  sensitivity  or  God-consciousness 
which  is  the  form  which  the  urge  of  evolution  henceforth 
assumes  for  man,  is  sin. 

It  has  been  maintained  that  from  the  evolutionary 
point  of  view  human  liberty  in  the  degree  already  attained 
is  but  the  development  of  the  growing  liberty  of  the  animal 
cerebro-psychic  centre  :  it  is  in  fact  the  liberty  of  that 
centre  become  conscious  of  itself  as  free.  And  just  as 
the  former  opened  the  road  to  organic  and  psychic  accident, 
impasse,  and  degeneration,  so  also  the  latter  opens  the 
way  to  moral  accident  or  sin.  As  Leenhardt  truly  says,1 
they  are  fundamentally  the  same  kind  of  facts,  but  con- 
sidered at  different  orders  or  stages  of  being,  and  so, 
however,  with  very  different  content  and  implication. 
But  whether  we  speak  of  the  fact  as  abnormal  develop- 
ment, or  use  the  terminology  of  theology  and  speak  of 
a  '  Fall '  and  sin,  does  not  much  matter  :  in  any  case, 
1  op.  dt.  p.  132. 


254     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

nomenclature  cannot  affect  the  facts.  On  the  whole, 
the  former  terminology  is  preferable  as  indicating  the 
definite  relation  of  these  later  stages  in  man's  history  to 
what  preceded  man. 

The  serious  difficulty  in  connection  with  all  attempts  to 
reconstruct  the  real  nature  and  possibilities  of  man  is  that 
we  have  no  very  direct  means  of  learning  about  the  stage 
that  represents  the  infancy  of  the  race — corresponding  to 
the  first  two  or  three  years  of  the  individual  life.  While 
the  fossil  remains  are  as  yet  comparatively  scant,  and  every 
modern  race  is  markedly  human,  and  possessed  of  charac- 
teristics representing  development  greatly  advanced  be- 
yond the  stage  in  question,  neither  can  any  modern  higher 
animal  give  us  much  idea  of  the  forms  immediately  pre- 
ceding the  animal  with  incipient  personality  :  they  are  all 
long  gone  out  of  the  narrow  upward  way.  It  becomes, 
therefore,  a  more  or  less  speculative  matter  when  one  at- 
tempts to  reconstruct  the  process  through  which  the  higher 
animal  became  the  animal  with  incipient  personality, 
a  moral  creature.  To-day  it  is  almost  impossible  for  us 
to  think  of  man  except  as  an  individual  surrounded  by 
a  moral  atmosphere,  with  his  mind  the  arena  of  conflicting 
motives.  The  stage,  however,  that  we  must  reconstruct 
is  something  slightly  in  advance  of  the  higher  animal, 
with  no  background  or  reserve  of  moral  motives  at  all 
in  the  developing  mind.  The  life  of  the  higher  animals  in 
default  of  any  general  moral  sense  of  obligation,  however 
incipient,  is,  broadly  speaking,  amoral,  an  existence  with 
a  very  high  degree  of  internal  harmony  simply  because 
there  is  no  possibility  of  internal  discord,  a  life  character- 
ised by  an  increasingly  high  degree  of  spontaneity  of 
action.  The  qualification,  however,  must  be  made,  for, 
as  Henry  Drummond x  and  others  have  shown,  from  an 
early  period  in  the  history  of  animal  life,  there  has  been 
behaviour  favourable  to  the  good  of  others,  at  first  all 
unconscious,  which  offset  the  instinctive  tendency  to  self- 
preservation,  and  as  involving  the  welfare  of  the  species, 
1  The  Ascent  of  Man,  chap.  vii. 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    255 

tended  ultimately  to  prove  the  more  influential  factor 
of  the  two.  We  may  even  hold  with  Professor  J.  Arthur 
Thomson  1  that  Animate  Nature  '  makes  for  '  the  Beauti- 
ful, the  Good,  and  the  True,  for,  to  take  the  last  character, 
the  creatures  that  have  faced  the  facts  of  life  and  tried 
to  learn  them — the  truth  seekers  and  the  knowing  ones 
— are  on  the  whole  most  likely  to  survive. 

Yet  we  have  been  compelled  to  look  on  all  this  as  a 
preparation  for  a  later  stage  with  the  possibility  of  fuller 
independence,  and  so  completer  mastery  of  the  developing 
self.  Out  of  these  conditions  the  next  stage  develops, 
but  without  any  bias  in  one  direction  or  another.  There  is 
no  possibility  of  strongly  developed  motive,  no  pressure 
from  below  so  to  speak,  or  from  above  :  there  is  no  in- 
evitability in  the  character  of  the  process  as  to  whether 
man  should  be,  so  to  speak,  good  or  bad.  The  so-called 
animal  passions  have  nothing  wrong  in  themselves  :  there 
is  little  misuse  of  them  in  nature.  The  conditions  of  the 
first  moral  act  are  possibly  entirely  unrepresentable  to  our 
minds  to-day  :  they  were  in  themselves,  so  far  as  the 
rest  of  the  animal  creation  was  concerned,  practically 
those  of  an  amoral  world.  The  slightest  degree  of 
ability  to  consider  and  pass  judgment  on  behaviour,  a 
situation  involving  a  challenging  alternative  to  be  that 
which  for  some  reason  he  approves  or  disapproves,  an 
elementary,  indefinable  sense  of  obligation  which  is  the 
new  form  of  the  evolutionary  urge,  less  immediately  com- 
pelling than  in  the  previous  stages  because  liberty  is  on  the 
point  of  meaning  more  and  being  more  realised  than  ever 
it  was  before — our  developed  conceptions  make  it  difficult 
to  represent  these  undeveloped  beginnings.  But  in  what- 
ever degree  man  follows  this  feeling  of  obligation,  he  shows 
himself  master  of  himself  since  he  has  made  himself  that 
which  he  approves  :  there  is  harmony  and  independence 
in  an  incipient  degree.  It  is  a  new  type  of  self-assertion, 
grounded  in  and  based  upon  the  lower  physical  assertive- 
ness  of  life,  but  determined  by  a  new  environmental 

1  The  Control  of  Life,  p.  267. 


256     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

relationship.  His  world  is  now  a  moral  world  and  he  can 
never  henceforward  step  out  of  it,  nor  pass  beyond  its 
determining  hold  on  him. 

Notwithstanding  the  inherent  difficulties  of  the  problem, 
the  question  as  to  how  this  incipiently  moral  self  did 
actually  come  into  being  in  the  early  stages  of  man's 
development  has  been  made  the  subject  of  much  considera- 
tion.1 The  instinct  of  preservation  which  antedates  the 
development  of  self-consciousness  may  with  the  develop- 
ment of  self-consciousness  become  increasingly  self-ish. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  sense  of  the  self  could  only  have 
been  developed  in  some  living  form  that  was  gregarious  in 
habit  and  had  accordingly  reached  a  certain  social  level, 
for  it  is  only  by  direct  contact,  relationship,  and  contrast 
with  others  that  the  idea  of  the  self  comes  into  clear 
recognition.  Fixed  relationships  or  customs  must  often 
have  come  at  first  into  being  without  any  very  deep 
reason,  for  the  power  of  reflection  at  this  stage  can  only 
have  been  of  the  simplest.  We  can  but  look  for  guidance 
in  study  to  the  mind  of  the  child,  regarding  it  as  recapitu- 
lating the  mental  history  of  the  race.  As  children  who 
have  built  a  castle  in  the  sand  with  more  than  one  entrance 
will,  after  a  short  discussion  that  evinces  no  sound  reason 
other  than  that  of  whimsical  fancies,  decide  that  visitors 
may  enter  only  by  one  particular  passage,  so  originally 
custom  and  habits  may  have  arisen  for  which  there  was, 
and  could  have  been,  no  reason  worth  the  name.  Later 
reflection  might  consider  how  these  customs  affected 
different  individuals,  whether,  that  is  to  say,  they  were 
just  in  their  incidence  or  otherwise,  whether  they  were 
indeed  supportable.  At  the  same  time,  in  these  relation- 
ships with  others  that  fashioned  the  sense  of  self  into  being, 
thought  as  in  the  mind  of  the  child  would  be  mainly 
occupied  with  the  objective  action  of  others  :  their 
behaviour  relation  to  the  developing  self  would  be  the 
subject  of  criticism  and  judgment  long  before  such  judg- 

1  For  a  good  account  see  James  Ward,  The  Realm  oj  Ends,  chap. 
xvii. 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    257 

ment  was  seriously  turned  upon  the  self  itself.  Intro- 
spection is  a  later  development,  a  harder  business  than 
direct  observation.  Accordingly  conduct  that  might  seem 
reprehensible  in  others  would  continue  to  be  indulged  in, 
all  unconsciously,  by  the  criticising  subject.  At  the  same 
time,  a  distinct  factor  in  the  promotion  of  introspection 
would  be  any  communication  to  an  individual  of  the 
impression  made  by  his  conduct  upon  others. 

Again,  previous  to  this  development  of  the  ability  to 
reflect  on  action  either  as  it  affected  others  or  the  self, 
actions  as  in  the  childhood  of  the  human  individual  to-day, 
reprehensible  in  older  people  because,  as  we  say,  '  they 
ought  to  know  better/  are  rightly  held  to  be  those  of  inno- 
cent and  guiltless  individuals.  And  the  same  holds  true 
a  fortiori  of  the  similar  activities  in  the  case  of  the  lower 
creation.  At  many  stages  previous  to  man  there  have  been 
possibilities  of  behaviour,  and  even  habits,  which  the  ex- 
perience of  more  developed  forms  shows  to  be  contrary  to 
the  welfare  of  the  race  and  of  the  individual  and  which  are 
therefore  disapproved  by  them,  but  which  cannot  be  held 
to  be  blameworthy  in  the  case  of  those  forms  that  have  not 
yet  developed  the  mental  apparatus  which  makes  reflec- 
tive experience  possible.  In  the  constitution  of  things  the 
adaptability  of  life  has  prevented  these  traits  from  ob- 
taining any  absolute  domination  in  the  world  of  life  as  a 
whole — the  deer  can  escape  from  the  devouring  carnivore 
by  fleetness — but  the  impulses  remain.  The  interest  for 
the  evolutionist  is  in  the  question,  which  is  part  of  the 
general  fact  of  progress,  as  to  how  activities  which  are  not 
blameworthy  at  one  stage  or  on  one  level  do  become  so 
at  another. 

The  ability  to  pass  judgment  on  the  conduct  of  others 
then  probably  antedated  self-criticism.  The  latter  would 
only  come  with  the  developed  self-consciousness.  Such 
self-judgment  or  conscience  thus  necessarily  implies  self- 
consciousness.  And  in  the  known  judgment  of  the 
family  or  tribe  upon  courses  of  action — the  public  opinion 
of  those  nearest  to  him — primitive  man  probably  found 
R 


258     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

his  first  moral  standard.  A  ban  is  set  upon  certain  lines 
of  conduct,  and  the  individual  facing  alternatives  comes 
to  realise  that  one  is  considered  worthier  than  the  other, 
and  henceforth  it  is  worthier  for  him.  Actions  that 
before  were  non-moral  have  now  become  such  as  should 
be  avoided,  and  are  in  that  measure  evil.  He  knows  things 
as  good  and  evil,  and  things  done  before  without  reflec- 
tion are  now  done  under  a  self -judgment,  approving  or 
disapproving.  The  origin  of  the  so-called  tribal  con- 
science can  only  in  the  end  be  set  down  to  the  influence 
of  some  individuals — possibly  one — more  prescient,  more 
sensitive,  more  quick  than  the  rest  in  attaining  this 
higher  consciousness.  From  such  a  point  of  view  ideas 
of  '  total  depravity  '  as  an  inherent  condition  of  the 
race  at  any  period  are  seen  to  be  purely  misanthropic. 
The  various  impulses  lying  at  the  basis  of  the  actions 
referred  to  are  not  in  themselves  moral  or  immoral,  but 
man's  use  of  them  from  the  dawn  of  self-consciousness 
is.  It  has  always  been  the  easy  thing  to  conform  to 
some  Environmental  aspect  of  the  moment,  to  seek  some 
equilibrium  on  a  lower  level,  to  give  up  the  struggle,  but 
to  do  so  is  the  unnatural  thing  ;  it  is  infidelity  to  the 
character  of  the  process. 

How  slow  has  been  the  advance,  the  following  of  the 
upward  way,  is  the  sad  reflection  of  those  who  are  in- 
terested in  the  welfare  of  the  race.  All  along  it  has  been 
a  struggle,  veritably  a  matter  of  life  and  death.  And  yet 
it  is  difficult  to  see  how  '  a  world  in  which  the  possibility 
of  wrong-doing  was  prevented  by  the  exclusion  of  all 
temptations  that  were  really  such  ' l  could  ever  be  or 
become  a  moral  world  at  all.  But  the  world  that  we 
know  is  a  world  in  which  conscience  is  a  reality  whether 
men  always  obey  it  or  not,  and  its  interests  are  those  of 
righteousness.  There  is  the  liberty  to  follow  or  not  to 
follow,  and  the  growing  liberty  implies  a  moral  order  in 
which  moral  evil  is  a  possibility.  But  that  possibility 
however  realised  has  been  powerless  to  prevent  the  moral 

1  James  Ward,  op.  cit,  p.  372. 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    259 

progress  of  the  race.  Morality  is  not  so  much  in  the 
nature  of  things  as  it  actually  is  the  nature  of  things  : 
the  moral  order  is  the  order  of  the  worid. 

It  is  perhaps  idle  to  speculate  how  if  man  had  con- 
sistently and  determinedly  aligned  himself  with  the 
promptings  of  that  '  still  small  voice  '  of  obligation,  how 
if,  in  that  first  moral  use  of  the  growing  liberty  which 
marked  the  transition  from  the  animal  with  incipient 
personality  to  man,  he  had  affirmed  his  self-mastery  in 
an  affirmation  of  the  self  as  his  duty,  there  would  have 
proceeded  more  rapidly  that  liberation  of  himself  from 
the  inherited  psychic  organism,  and  his  transformation 
of  it  into  an  instrument  better  suited  to  his  internal 
harmonious  development.  Physical  evil  would  have  re- 
tained that  character  of  a  stimulus,  warning  token  and 
test  which  it  has  for  the  lower  creation,  but  it  would  have 
been  more  rapidly  overcome.  What  is  more  important 
is  to  note  as  objective  historical  fact  that  man  being  as 
we  have  actually  seen  him  to  be,  some  half  a  million  of 
years  after  the  period  in  which  the  higher  mammal  was 
becoming  the  sub-personal  animal,  and  while  yet  humanity 
was  in  its  childhood,  there  appeared  in  Palestine  One  who 
in  His  person  exhibited  perfect  manhood,  and  whose  life 
was  at  once  full  of  the  completest  internal  harmony,  and 
liberty,  and  independence.  No  other  life  has  ever  given 
such  a  sense  of  perfect  freedom.  His  absolute  mastery  of 
Himself  in  face  of  every  kind  of  temptation,  and  through- 
out a  series  of  situations  that  finally  involved  His  execu- 
tion, never  failed.  He  realised  in  every  particular  that 
towards  which  the  whole  evolutionary  process  has  been 
evidently  tending.  At  first  it  seems  inexplicable  that  this 
perfect  type  should  appear  unique  in  the  midst  of  historic 
humanity,1  all  of  whom  are  separated  from  Him  if  in 
nothing  else  than  that  in  every  other  human  soul  there 
is  internal  disharmony.  His  appearance,  which  is  the 
most  remarkable  fact  in  human  history,  is  yet  in  itself 
in  one  sense  of  the  same  order  as  that  of  the  appearance 
1  See  later,  p.  315. 


260     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

of  personality  in  animality  :  that  is  to  say,  it  marks  the 
introduction  of  a  new  era  in  human  history.  But  the 
change  is  so  profound  as  to  constitute  Him  the  turning- 
point  or  pivot  in  all  history.  As  a  matter  of  simple 
observation  civilisation  moved  manifestly  in  Him  from 
a  Self-regarding  basis,  as  exemplified  at  that  time  in  the 
Roman  State,  to  an  Other-regarding  basis,  represented 
in  the  Church.  Christianity  gave  a  new  direction  to 
human  history.  For  in  Him  there  came  to  light  and 
actuality  for  the  first  and  only  time  that  for  which  the 
whole  process  from  the  beginning  had  evidently  been 
planned,  and  He  is  the  fulfilment  of  all  that  went 
before.  The  more  that  process  is  seen  to  be  a  unity,  the 
more  clearly  will  this  eternal  and  absolute  significance  of 
Jesus  Christ  become  apparent.  In  Him  the  specifically 
human  characteristic  of  Love  came  for  the  first  and  only 
time  to  perfect  and  victorious  expression  over  the  organi- 
cally derived  complex  of  human  nature,  i.e.  over  the 
selfishness  of  the  individual,  with  the  result  that  His 
personality  and  teaching  thereafter  acted  as  a  trans- 
forming elemental  energy  in  the  world.  He  was  the  first 
and  only  perfect  man — the  Son  of  man  :  He  was  the  first 
and  only  One  in  Whom  Love,  the  fundamental  character 
of  God,  found  perfect  expression — the  Son  of  God.  So 
that  He  is  unique  whether  we  look  backwards  or  forwards 
— backwards,  for  never  man  spake  or  lived  or  died  as 
He  did  ;  forwards,  for  history  can  only  once  traverse 
such  a  turning-point.  In  a  very  real  sense  He  is  the 
Alpha  and  Omega  of  strictly  human  history. 

Another  remarkable  fact  is  that  in  some  kind  of  a 
direct  relation  to  Him,  men  of  all  races  and  civilisations 
have  found  that  they  are  freed  from  the  tormenting 
internal  dualism  so  characteristic  of  humanity,  and  begin 
to  become  masters  of  themselves  through  some  moral 
energy  that  is  associated  with  Him.  He  gives  liberty 
to  the  captive  :  the  spiritual  life  of  men,  as  often  indeed 
their  physical  life  also  in  some  measure,  is  renewed  in 
every  aspect,  through  this  relation  with  Him.  It  is  a 


EVOLUTION  AS  WINNING  OF  FREEDOM    261 

transformation  that  reaches  to  the  very  core  of  a  man's 
being,  to  the  self  that  has  been  struggling  for  affirmation 
and  control :  a  spiritual  Power  is  at  work  which  is  an 
expression  of  this  new  relation.  It  may  be  difficult  to 
explain  the  fact,  but  it  is  there.  Throughout  the  world 
there  is  an  increasing  race  of  men — the  word  is  not  too 
strong,  although  the  characteristics  are  not  physical  but 
spiritual — who  by  an  act  of  will,  bringing  themselves  into 
relation  with  Him,  attain  to  yet  greater  liberty  and  begin 
to  develop  a  quality  of  life  which,  if  His  words  are  true, 
is  eternal. 

Accordingly,  then,  we  may  really  see  a  double  move- 
ment in  human  evolution,  which  goes  far  deeper  than  the 
superficial  siftings  of  nationality.  The  one  concerns 
those  individuals  and  masses  of  individuals  whose  evolu- 
tion will  end  like  other  lines  of  previous  evolutionary 
history,  in  an  impasse,  just  because  the  individual  is  at  once 
cause  and  effect,  without  spiritual  relationship,  and  a  prey 
to  a  disrupting  inward  disharmony  of  mind  :  the  other, 
a  new  line  which  tends  towards  increasing  self-mastery, 
freedom,  and  inward  harmony.  The  former  line  will 
long  persist,  enriching  civilisation  and  itself  evolving  to 
some  extent,  but  with  no  ultimate  future  beyond  that  of 
the  limits  of  terrestrial  existence,  except  in  so  far  as  its 
members  come  to  realise  their  true  destiny  :  it  constitutes 
a  divergent  evolutionary  branch.  The  other  branch  is 
in  the  true  line  of  continued  evolution.  Its  members 
while  sharing  in  and  contributing  to  the  advance  of 
science  and  art  and  literature,  and  in  every  way  helping 
to  raise  the  standard  of  civilisation,  realise  that  terrestrial 
conditions  are  a  determining  phase  in  that  process  of 
attaining  self-mastery,  inward  harmony,  individuality, 
and  freedom  :  for  love  has  no  value  in  God  or  man  except 
in  so  far  as  the  lover  is  completely  master  of  himself, 
is  really  free.  At  the  same  time,  there  is  little  doubt, 
to  judge  by  the  progress  of  the  past,  that  human  evolu- 
tion as  a  whole  even  in  its  terrestrial  phase  will  become 
increasingly  spiritual,  that  is  to  say,  that  humanity  will 


262     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

more  and  more  show  in  its  members  '  a  unity  of  that 
which  man  is  and  of  that  which  he  wishes  to  be.' 1  Such 
a  stage  when  achieved  terrestrially  will  be  the  Kingdom 
of  God  upon  earth — that  condition  when  the  Will  of  God 
will  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  done  in  heaven. 

1  Leenhardt,  op.  cit.  p.  152. 


CHAPTER  XII 

GOD  AND   THE  WORLD 

THE  evolutionary  history  of  the  origin  of  man,  however 
far  back  we  care  to  trace  it,  presents  us  with  a  series  of 
stages  with  considerable  gaps.  Even  in  the  most  recent 
series  of  events  from  the  Pliocene  onwards,  the  number 
of  these  lacunae  is  not  insignificant.  On  the  other  hand, 
every  year  contributes  something  to  making  the  story 
more  of  a  connected  whole.  Every  decade  the  explana- 
tion of  the  growing  number  of  stages  appears  more  reason- 
able in  terms  of  Evolution,  than  on  the  alternative  of  the 
Special  Creation  of  each  one  of  them  from  some  ancestral 
pair.  With  the  further  realisation  of  the  course  of  each 
individual  human  history  as  a  progress  from  the  initial 
stage  of  the  fertilised  egg-cell  to  adult  manhood,  a  pro- 
cess will  be  seen  in  which  that  ancestral  history  is  resumed 
or  rehearsed  without  a  gap  or  break,  and  it  will  become 
increasingly  probable  that  what  is  true  of  the  individual 
must  have  been  true  of  the  race — in  fact,  is  true  of  the 
individual,  because  it  was  true  of  the  race. 

At  the  same  time,  such  an  explanation  is  after  all  only 
proximate  and  methodological.  The  mind  is  still  un- 
satisfied. It  pushes  further  back  in  its  effort  to  reach 
some  interpretation  of  the  series  as  a  whole,  to  find 
some  thread  whereon  to  string  this  impressive  cluster 
of  data,  some  clue  to  the  meaning  of  it  all.  The  impres- 
sion is  ever  one  of  activity,  of  process  ;  it  is  dynamic 
throughout.  With  no  absolute  beginning,  so  far  as  we 
can  see,  the  process  takes  the  form  in  the  case  of  our  planet 
of  a  long  period  of  inorganic  evolution  preparatory  to  a 
second  stage  which  is  characterised  by  life,  and  leads 


264     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

directly  to  a  third,  of  which  man  is  the  distinguishing 
feature  and  culmination.  It  gives  an  impression  of  pur- 
posiveness  throughout.  There  has  also  been  everywhere 
the  indication  of  order,  which  inevitably  suggests  mind. 
At  no  point  is  there  insuperable  evidence  of  a  complete 
and  absolute  break,  or  ab  initio  creation  of  the  whole. 
There  are  expression  points,  moments  whose  implications 
are  greater  than  their  actual  advent,  increments,  points 
after  which  everything  moved  upon  a  higher  plane,  but 
in  every  such  change,  transformation  or  epiphany,  there  is 
always  something  carried  over  from  the  previous  stage. 
Life  builds  upon  the  basis  of  the  inorganic  elements  ; 
self-consciousness  after  all  posits  consciousness  ;  Jesus 
is  the  Son  of  Mary.  The  new  character  or  grace  is  super- 
venient, the  outcome  of  '  emergent  evolution,'  in  active 
relationship  at  every  moment  with  a  stimulating,  sup- 
porting, and  revealing  Environment,  and  it  is  always  in 
some  way  directly  linked  with  what  preceded. 

While,  then,  the  proof  of  such  continuity,  e.g.  in  the 
evolution  of  man,  may  be  still  incomplete  at  certain 
points,  yet  it  is  maintained  that  all  the  indications, 
inorganic  and  organic  alike,  point  in  the  direction  of  such 
continuity  both  of  physical  and  spiritual  life,  and  that 
such  a  view  gives  the  more  satisfying  explanation.  It  has 
been  suggested  that  the  real  continuity  lies  in  the  realm  of 
energetic  relations,  and  as  the  process  seems  to  develop 
in  one  particular  principal  direction,  viz.  the  evolution  of 
man,  and  is  apparently  not  reversible,  it  gives  the  im- 
pression of  being  in  a  general  way  controlled  and  directed, 
that  is  to  say,  of  being  under  the  influence  of  mind  not 
indeed  necessarily  knowing  and  intending  everything  in 
advance,  but  working  persistently  towards  a  specific 
consummation.  The  existence  of  the  different  forms  of 
energy,  however  interpretable  in  terms  one  of  the  other, 
leads  back  in  thought  to  some  common  Source. 

Of  mind  as  influencing  the  direction  of  energy,  con- 
trolling it  so  that  the  expenditure  of  it  takes  place  in  ways 
which  would  not  otherwise  have  been  the  case,  and  pro- 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  265 

ducing  changes  in  the  distribution  of  matter  and  energy,  we 
have  sufficient  evidence  in  the  case  of  man.  Accordingly 
it  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  some  kind  of  selective  and 
purposeful  activity  does  not  at  least  ground  and  condition 
that  energetic  process  of  which  man  is  the  final  product. 
Using  the  word  to  express  the  basis  of  all  the  phenomena 
of  consciousness  in  man  and  the  higher  animals,  and 
of  that  proconsciousness  which  accompanies  the  self- 
preservative  activities  of  even  the  lowliest  of  organisms, 
we  find  a  continuity  of  something  that  becomes  enriched 
and  expansive  in  its  relations  with  the  Environment  as 
life  advances.  Now  this  evolution  of  mind  and  the  de- 
velopment of  the  individual  cannot  have  come  about 
from  matter,  if  the  earlier  statements  on  the  relations  of 
energy  and  matter  and  mind  are  true  ;  they  may,  how- 
ever, well  be  the  result  of  the  activities  of  a  World-Ground 
that  is  itself  of  the  essence  of  a  self-determining  Mind. 
In  this  way,  while  we  are  pushed  towards  a  theistic  inter- 
pretation as  the  most  reasonable,  it  must  be  a  self- 
consistent  Theism. 

In  this  connection  the  age-long  yet  unsolved  problem 
of  the  relationship  of  mind  and  brain  will  be  viewed,  in 
virtue  of  our  other  data,  in  terms  of  the  primacy  of  mind. 
No  quantitative  relationship  has  been  established,  or  is 
ever  likely  to  be  established,  between  the  two  entities. 
Consciousness,  as  we  ordinarily  know  it,  is  associated 
in  a  certain  relation  with  a  brain  :  but  this  does  not 
necessarily  mean  that  a  brain  is  an  indispensable  accom- 
paniment of  consciousness.  We  know  that  lower  grades 
of  consciousness  are  present  in  the  case  of  organisms  that 
have  no  brain,  and  in  the  case  of  man  consciousness  waxes 
and  wanes  in  intensity  in  very  varying  degrees.  The 
detailed  proof  by  Professor  Bergson  of  the  theses  that 
'  there  is  infinitely  more,  in  a  human  consciousness,  than 
in  the  corresponding  brain,' l  that  '  the  mind  overflows 
the  brain  on  all  sides,  and  that  cerebral  activity  responds 

1  Mind-Energy,  p.   41  ;    cf.   also    Matter    and    Memory,  chaps,  ii. 

an  1  in. 


266     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

only  to  a  very  small  part  of  mental  activity,'  1  seems 
convincing.  In  fact  we  are  just  on  the  threshold  of 
knowledge  with  regard  to  the  effects  of  thought  upon 
the  nervous  system,  and  the  associated  field  of  pheno- 
mena like  hypnosis,  stigmata,  and  possibly  even  tele- 
pathy has  as  yet  been  only  scratched  on  the  surface. 
From  vasodilatations  like  blushing  to  actual  metabolic 
changes  in  nerve-cells  there  lies  a  whole  range  of  pheno- 
mena definitely  inducible  by  thought,  although  assuredly 
there  is  also  much  evidence  of  the  effect  of  body  upon 
mind.  The  Two-Aspect  or  Identity  Hypothesis  of  the 
relations  of  mind  and  body,2  while  it  permits  of  the 
envisaging  of  organic  Evolution  as  a  general  development 
from  mind-bodies  to  body-minds,  and  looks  on  psychosis 
and  neurosis  as  the  convex  and  concave  sides,  so  to  speak, 
of  the  same  curve,  does  not  perhaps  so  easily  provide  for 
that  degree  of  initiative  that  is  at  any  rate  in  evidence  all 
along,  tending  to  suggest  the  predominance  of  mind,  and 
would  appear  to  involve  a  degree  of  exact  correlation 
between  states  of  mind  and  body  that  does  not  in  point 
of  fact  always  exist. 

Of  Mind,  however,  or  more  particularly  Will,  i.e.  the 
mind  in  deliberate  action,  as  creative  of  energy — a  concep- 
tion which  would  resolve  for  us  the  final  dualism  of  Mind 
and  Energy — the  evidence  is  not  as  yet  direct.  At  the 
same  time,  there  are  some  considerations  that  make  such 
a  solution  at  any  rate  conceivable.  Thus  the  doctrine  of 
the  Conservation  of  Energy  while  experimentally  true  of 
any  detached  or  abstracted  portion  of  Reality,  and  so  a 
useful  and  necessary  working  hypothesis,  is  a  mere 
unproved  assumption  when  applied  to  the  Universe  as  a 
whole,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  in  those  cases  where 
equivalence  in  work  compels  belief  in  actual  transforma- 
tion of  energy,  we  have  as  yet  no  knowledge  of  the 
exact  nature  of  the  physical  change  involved  in  such 

1  Mind-Energy,  p.  57. 

1  For  an  admirable  summary  of  present-day  theories  see  Prof.  J. 
Arthur  Thomson,  The  System  of  Animate  Nature,  vol.  i.  chap.  vii. 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  267 

transmutation.  There  is  the  further  assumption  that  the 
physical  is  only  and  always  physical,  and  there  is  no  sug- 
gested ultimate  physical  source  for  the  infinite  energy  of 
the  Universe.  On  the  other  hand,  the  view  which  regards 
Mind  or  Will  as  creative  of  Energy,  or  Energy  as  a  mani- 
festation of  Will,  helps  to  make  intelligible  the  specificity 
of  action,  the  directedness,  the  working  out  of  what  looks 
like  purpose.  It  is  also  the  case  that  the  very  conception 
of  Energy  comes  to  us  historically  '  from  a  depersonalis- 
ing of  human  will,  and  .  .  .  implies  a  direct  experience 
of  a  sense  of  effort.' l 

However  these  things  may  be,  the  evolutionary  process 
of  creation  with  its  suggestion  of  urge  or  drive  in  a 
definite  and  culminating  direction,  gives  the  impression 
of  a  Supreme  Mind  going  forth  in  creative  and  directive 
energetic  activity,  as  the  result  of  which  physical  organisa- 
tions are  built  up  '  of  ever-increasing  complexity  suitable 
for  the  reception  of  its  ever-increasing  influx.'  2  In 
Bergson's  phraseology,  '  I  see  in  the  whole  evolution  of 
life  on  our  planet  a  crossing  of  matter  by  a  creative  con- 
sciousness, an  effort  to  set  free,  by  force  of  ingenuity  and 
invention,  something  which  in  the  animal  still  remains 
imprisoned  and  is  only  finally  released  when  we  reach 
man.'  3  The  process  consists,  then,  in  the  preparation  of 
an  inorganic  environment  composed  of  matter  with 
strictly  determinate  relationships,  forming  the  founda- 
tional  substructure  or  matrix  in  association  with  which 
life  came  into  being.  Now  matter  is  ultimately  explicable 
in  terms  of  energy,4  and  in  that  whole  process  of  self- 
emptying  or  kenosis  which  is  Creation,  the  self-limitation 
of  God  nowhere  so  markedly  appears  as  in  this  relatively 
fixed,  proximate,  physical  aspect  of  Environment,  from 
the  domination  of  which  life  has  ever  been  struggling 
into  freedom  and  union  with  the  deeper  ultimate  Source 
or  Ground  of  it  all,  which  is  God.  Objectively,  then,  the 

1  J.  E.  Mercer,  The  Problem  of  Creation,  p.  107. 

1  G.  W.  de  Tunzelmann,  God  and  the  Universe,  p.  131. 

»  Mind-Energy,  p.  18.  «  P.  9. 


268     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

result  of  Evolution  at  every  stage  is  seen  to  be  a  growing 
freedom  from  the  domination  of  the  proximate  physical 
aspects  of  the  Environment,  which  develops  in  the  case  of 
man  into  a  progressive  control  of  them  through  growing 
commerce,  rapport,  and  union  with  the  ultimate  spiritual 
Reality  in  that  Environment.  With  him,  moreover,  the 
freedom  to  be  won  covers  the  whole  range  of  his  inherited 
animal  past.  Progress,  Life,  Evolution  throughout,  have 
depended  on  growing  adaptation  to  ever  deeper  and 
wider  aspects  of  the  Environment :  complete  adaptation 
to  the  proximate  material  aspect  has  always  meant 
stagnation,  and  destruction  sooner  or  later.  The  aim  of 
the  process  is  the  development  of  perfect,  i.e.  truly 
free,  personality — conscious  of  volitional  choice  between 
alternatives,  conscious  that  it  is  not  compelled  to  choose 
at  once,  but  can  do  so  in  deliberate  review  of  its  whole 
experience.  Perfect  freedom  is  perfect  self-determination 
from  within,  as  opposed  to  rigid  compulsion  from  with- 
out. The  forces  of  what  seemed  to  be  the  inevitable 
are  increasingly  controlled  by  the  developing  will. 

The  process,  therefore,  is  interpretable  as  one  through 
which,  as  the  result  of  this  self-limitation  of  God  in  a 
creative  activity  providing  both  the  principle  which 
issues  in  self-realised  spirit  and  the  Environment  which 
renders  such  self-realisation  possible,  living  organisms 
progressively  come  into  being  which  are  stages  in  the 
development  of  self-conscious  spirit.  God  creates  that 
which  by  interaction  with  the  Environment,  likewise  a 
manifestation  of  Himself,  may  win  freedom,  may  issue 
in  free  self-realised  spirit.  In  the  earlier  stages  there 
is  no  consciousness  as  we  know  it,  but  the  process  leads 
towards  consciousness.  The  lowest  organisms  are  mainly 
'  conscious  '  of  matter — the  proximate  physical  aspect  of 
the  Environment.  Higher  organisms  are  conscious  of 
matter  and  of  other  organisms,  but  even  they  react 
principally  to  discontinuous  stimuli  of  limited  range,  as 
compared  with  man.  Their  mental  life  is  largely  a  series 
of  discrete  experiences  and  disconnected  moments  ;  their 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  269 

world  is  a  world  of  percepts.  With  memory,  continuity 
of  conscious  experience  becomes  for  the  first  time  pos- 
sible, as  also  sustained  action  according  to  a  plan,  and 
that  developed  form  of  intelligence  that  realises  the 
continuity  in  the  Environment.  Freedom  is  found  to  be 
in  direct  relation  to  the  development  of  spirit :  growth 
in  the  latter  is  growth  in  freedom.  Growing  freedom 
on  the  mental  side  means  emergence  from  discontinuity 
into  coherent  unity,  advance  towards  the  individual. 
As  his  mental  development  proceeds,  man  realises  more 
and  more  that  the  spiritual  is  ultimate  :  indeed,  accord- 
ing to  Bergson,  spirit  is  progress  in  duration. 

We  have  seen  how  a  progressive  gaining  of  freedom  is 
of  the  very  core  of  the  evolutionary  process.  Yet  even 
in  the  slowly  growing  degree  in  which  it  is  manifest  at 
every  stage  in  life,  increase  in  freedom  is  not  given  to 
all :  indeed,  it  is  given  to  none,  but  all  have  had  the 
opportunity  and  power  of  attaining  it,  and  while  even 
the  complete  self-realisation  of  the  developed  spirit  in 
perfect  goodness  and  love  is  dependent  upon  freedom, 
yet  is  there  no  compulsion  towards  freedom.  There  is 
the  impulse  or  urge  and  the  possibilities  at  every  stage, 
but  all  this  is  often  nullified  by  the  impulse  towards 
equilibrium,  and  no  advance  is  made.  The  material 
aspect  of  the  Environment  is  always  there,  and  different 
creatures  respond  to  its  stimuli  in  different  ways  :  never- 
theless throughout  there  is  selection  by  the  Environment 
of  a  '  saving  remnant '  who  responded  to  its  spiritual 
beckonings.  Progress  in  freedom  could  only  be  won  by 
struggle  with,  extrication  from,  and  gradual  conquest  of, 
that  which  is  not  free,  hence  the  necessity  for  the  proxi- 
mate physical  aspects  of  the  Environment.  As  M'Dowall 
points  out  in  a  very  suggestive  book,  '  freedom  must 
necessarily  be  based  on  determination  of  some  sort.' *  It 
means  the  achievement  of  self-determination  out  of  the 
press  of  external  factors  which  would  constrain  the 
plastic  growing  spirit.  Also  it  involves  utilisation  of  the 

1  Stewart  A.  M'Dowall,  Evolution  and  Spiritual  Life,  p.  154. 


270     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

gains  of  others,  of  past  efforts,  and  that  may  mean  pain 
and  suffering  for  these  others.  Yet  except  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  such  economy,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  there 
could  be  progress.  Forms  that  did  not  make  for  pro- 
gress, having  turned  out  of  the  narrow,  upward  way, 
have  either  filled  a  humbler  but  far  from  valueless  role, 
or  were  killed  out,  or  found  their  end  in  culs-de-sac  of 
parasitism  or  actual  degeneration.  Hence  the  pain  and 
suffering  incidental  to  all  advance,  and  we  can  only 
believe — and  are  confirmed  in  that  belief  by  the  Incarna- 
tion— that  God  suffers  as  things  go  wrong,  whether  in  the 
case  of  the  unconscious  lower  creation  or  of  man.  If 
freedom  is  the  goal,  then  struggle  and  suffering  are 
inevitable,  for  freedom  means  extrication  and  trans- 
cendence. 

Creation,  then,  is  a  definite  self-limitation  of  God,  a 
surrender  in  part  of  His  freedom,  which  is  restored  as 
His  creatures  are  perfected:  nevertheless,  Justin  the  degree 
in  which  even  man's  partial  freedom  is  real,  God  is  self- 
limited  in  relation  to  him.  Perfect  spirits  cannot  be 
made  :  the  whole  idea  of  being  made  is  incompatible  with 
the  idea  of  freedom.  Because  God  is  Love,  He  must  be 
self -communicating,  and  that  for  Him  means  creation. 
He  is  eternally  Love,  and  so  in  virtue  of  His  nature,  eter- 
nally a  Creator  :  it  is  His  Love,  so  to  speak,  that  supplies 
the  driving  force  or  urge  or  impulse,  and  the  more  we 
consider  the  world  process  the  more  we  are  constrained 
to  admit  that  it  is  all  of  grace,  that  indeed,  in  a  very  real 
sense,  as  Erigena  long  ago  maintained,  'Nature  and  Grace 
are  one,  the  ways  of  Nature  being  manifestations  of  Grace, 
and  Grace  achieving  its  purposes  through  the  eternal 
orderliness  of  Nature.' 1  Love  is  God  in  activity,  and 
'  where  Love  is,  there  God  is  also.'  There  is,  therefore, 
an  eternal  impulse  towards  creation  in  God,  since  a  desire 
for  fellowship  or  union  always  craves  expansion  as  well 
as  intensification.  He  creates  the  conditions  under 

1  From  a  chapter  on  '  Erigena :  the  Division  of  Nature,'  by  G.  J. 
Blewett  in  The  Study  of  Nature  and  the  Vision  of  God,  p.  329. 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  271 

which  freedom  can  be  won  by  spiritual  beings,  and  then 
in  a  measure  leaves  to  them  the  winning  of  their  freedom. 
'  Work  out  your  own  salvation,'  says  the  Apostle,1  but 
immediately  he  adds,  '  it  is  God  that  worketh  in  you  to 
will  and  to  do  of  His  good  pleasure.'  We  see  the  actual 
method  ;  we  do  not  know  enough  to  say  that  it  was  the 
only  method  possible,  but  we  do  know  that  it  is  achieving 
the  end.  And  this  end  is  the  perfecting  of  beings  who  are 
acquiring  the  attributes  of  personality,  and  their  final 
union  with  Him,  not  indeed  by  way  of  absorption,  but 
in  an  existence  of  communion  whose  basis  and  object 
shall  still  be  activity  and  love  in  alignment  with  His 
will.  The  process,  that  is  to  say,  issues  supremely  in 
other  self-determining  personalities  who  differ  from  Him 
as  distinct  individual  personalities,  each  with  its  own 
experience,  which,  however,  can  never  be  of  the  same 
degree  as  that  of  Him  in  whom  they  find  their  cause, 
differing  from  Him,  as  they  do,  also,  in  that  while  they 
began  to  be  in  time,  He  is  from  all  eternity.  The  evolu- 
tion of  personality  when  perfected  means  '  unity  of 
experience  between  the  perfected  soul  and  the  Creator 
so  far  as  the  experience  of  the  former  reaches,  while  yet 
the  persons  remain  distinct,' 2  and  unity  comes  when 
the  evolving  spirit  of  man  has  become  wholly  assimilated 
to,  though  never  absorbed  in,  the  Spirit  of  Divine  Love. 
Unity  with  God,  in  perfect  mutual  spiritual  experience, 
free  from  all  limitations,  is  Eternal  Life,  and  this  means 
an  enrichment  of  the  experience  of  God  Himself  through 
'  the  reciprocal  fulfilment  of  love.'  s 

The  winning  of  freedom,  however,  leaves  the  way  open, 
as  we  have  seen,  for  the  introduction  of  wrong  methods 
in  the  lower  creation  :  in  the  case  of  man  the  gaining  of 
freedom  means  the  possibility  of  sin.  That  possibility 
first  comes  into  being  when  man  can  make  a  right  decision, 
knowing  it  to  be  such.  Hence,  while  pain  and  suffering  are 
inevitable  elements  in  the  process,  sin  is  no  necessary 

1  Phil.  2  ».  »  M'Dowall,  op.  cit.  p.  49. 

•  M'Dowall,  op.  cit.  p.  138. 


272     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

product  of  evolution.  It  is  misdirection  of  personality, 
'  a  misdirection  of  the  will  in  time,  which  adds  to  Reality 
only  when  the  issue  in  conduct  is  actually  consum- 
mated. .  .  .  God  suffers  in  the  consequences  of  man's 
sin,  but  sin  itself  has  no  part  in  Him/  l  He  is  affected  by 
it  as  it  affects  Reality.  Sin  is  failure  to  continue  to  win 
freedom,  an  acceptance  of  dynamic  equilibrium,  definite 
rejection  of  the  purpose  of  life,  treason  to  the  purpose  of 
the  process.  Sin  is  knowledge  rejected,  and  it  is  know- 
ledge that  makes  sin  possible.  It  is  deliberate  wilful  fail- 
ure to  achieve  the  purpose  of  the  whole  process  in  relation 
to  the  individual  life.  The  sinner  remains  bound.  It 
is  in  the  creature,  not  in  his  surroundings,  that  we  must 
look  for  the  significance  of  sin.  It  is  the  rebellious  refusal 
to  progress — acceptance  of  the  present.  '  Sin  is  any 
want  of  conformity  unto  or  transgression  of  the  law  of 
God,' — the  law  of  progress,  and  true  self-realisation. 

The  self-limitation  of  God  in  creation  is,  then,  finite  ; 
it  affects  only  a  portion  of  His  experience.  Matter 
may  be  regarded  as  the  result  of  the  elimination  of 
freedom  from  a  certain  portion  of  the  experience  of 
God.  In  the  fulness  of  His  experience  He  is  trans- 
cendent. Duration  is  characteristic  of  that  which  is 
becoming,  of  the  process,  of  God  as  Immanent.  God 
is,  we  have  said ;  the  World  becomes.  He  is  the  Being 
in  the  Becoming — that  is  God  as  immanent.  But  He 
is  not  exhausted  by  the  process  :  He  is — that  is  God  as 
transcendent,  as  simultaneous.  It  is  peculiarly  difficult 
to  represent  the  situation  clearly  to  ourselves,  yet  we  get 
a  hint  of  it  in  our  own  personality,  and  man  being  a 
genetic  product  of  the  process,  there  is  no  illegitimacy  in 
arguing  from  man  to  the  character  of  the  process.  If  we 
make  God  in  our  image,  it  is  because  He  first  made  us  in 
His.  Now  every  human  individual  can  say  of  himself, 
'  I  am,  and  I  become.'  There  is  something  of  him  that 
is  not  subject  to  the  law  of  change  in  the  degree  in  which 
this  is  true  of  the  physical  and  certain  mental  aspects  of 

1  M'Dowall,  op.  cit.  p.  138. 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  273 

his  being.  Now  that  which  is  persistent  through  these 
changes — that  self-identity  or  measure  of  individuality 
that  gives  him  a  sense  of  transcendence  to  the  rest  of 
himself — is  the  basis  on  which  his  existence  and  his  freedom 
rest,  and  his  freedom  is  his  power  to  create  and  initiate 
change.  In  this  he  differs  from  the  inorganic  and  mark- 
edly in  degree  from  all  other  organic  forms.  The  con- 
sciousness of  transcendence  comes  out  also  in  self- 
consciousness — in  the  ability  to  separate  himself  as 
subject  from  himself  as  object.1  The  activity  of  God 
as  Transcendent  is  internal,  within  Himself,  or  with  the 
spirits  of  just  men  made  perfect,  for  the  meaning  of 
communion  is  activity  without  change.  On  the  other 
hand,  His  activity  in  relation  to  the  cosmic  process  and 
the  gradual  development  of  beings  towards  greater 
freedom  and  perfection  is  in  time,  durational,  and  in 
that  limited  sense  God  is  becoming,  becoming  man,  a 
limitation  that  is  removed  as  men  become  perfect. 
God  has  been  becoming  man  in  order  that  man  may 
become  as  God.  He  became  man  in  Jesus  Christ,  the 
Incarnate  Logos.  So  in  thinking  of  the  Transcendence 
of  God  we  strive  to  represent  and  express  to  ourselves 
His  persistence  through  change,  His  wisdom  and  fulness 
of  power. 

In  thinking  of  God  as  Transcendent  we  think  of  His 
internal  self-determination  and  perfect  freedom,  and  in 
thinking  of  Him  as  Immanent  we  have  in  mind  His 
creative  activity  based  on  volition  externally  directed. 
The  last  follows  from  His  nature  which  is  Love,  and 
Love  means  the  desire  to  share  experience.  And  the 
movement  is  towards  the  development  of  personalities 
because  God  Himself  is  Transcendent  Personality,  the 
Suprapersonal.  Union  is  the  entering  of  other  person- 
alities into  His  experience  as  far  as  that  is  possible 
for  beings  who  have  had  a  beginning  in  time.  Now 
we  can  see  as  objective  fact  evidences  of  the  striv- 

1  Telepathy,  the  ability  of  one  mind  to  influence  another  at  a  dis- 
tance, if  a  fact,  would  also  give  a  certain  sense  of  transcendence. 

S 


274     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

ing  of  the  human  soul  throughout  the  ages  to  enter 
into  relationship  with  that  Power  which,  by  its  char- 
acteristics revealed  in  the  world  process,  we  are  driven 
to  think  of  as  God.  And  just  because  we  know  our- 
selves as  on  the  way  towards  complete  personality  we 
cannot  be  content  with  anything  less  than  a  Personal 
God,  and  feel  the  insufficiency  of  a  view  which  conceives 
of  God  as  no  more  than  '  unceasing  life,  action,  and 
freedom,'  having  '  nothing  of  the  already  made.'  J  Such 
a  view  includes  no  conception  of  Transcendence  :  it  is 
Pantheism,  as  sterile  a  creed  as  Unitarianism.  But  man 
is  a  product  of  the  process,  which  we  have  related  to 
God,  and  God  cannot  be  less  than  man ;  and  therefore 
Personality  in  some  suprapersonal  sense  must  be  predi- 
cated of  God.  Now  Love  is  the  most  characteristic 
feature  of  personality,  so  that  we  can  believe  that  God 
is  Love,  and  that  the  creative  movement,  an  expression 
of  His  Personality,  is  directed  towards  the  development 
of  a  plurality  of  persons  in  perfect  union  with  Him  and 
completely  free,  and  so  enriching  and  completing  the 
experience  of  Him  who  filleth  all  things.  Finally,  in  this 
connection,  while  we  must  believe  that  the  Transcendence 
of  God  is  complete  in  spite  of  the  fact  of  His  Imman- 
ence, yet  in  man  that  which  we  have  seen  to  be  sug- 
gestive of,  and  in  a  measure  capable  of,  transcendence 
— his  developing  individuality  or  self — is  imperfect  just 
because  of  its  physical  immanence.  Now  to  become 
more  self-determined  from  within,  i.e.  more  free,  is  for 
the  human  spirit  to  pass  from  immanence  to  transcend- 
ence, from  the  temporal  to  the  eternal.  Man's  freedom 
is  his  transcendence.  And  it  is  just  here  that  the 
struggle  for  freedom  and  ewdividuality  against  bondage 
and  dissolution  or  annihilation  is  most  severe  and  most 
critical,  for  on  it  would  appear  to  depend  the  attainment 
or  non-attainment  of  that  condition  which  is  Eternal 
Life. 

1  Prof.  Bergson,  Creative  Evolution,  p.  262. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE   SCRIPTURAL  DOCTRINE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

IN  bringing  the  conclusions  of  the  previous  chapters  to 
the  test  of  Scriptural  teaching,  that  is  to  say,  in  attempt- 
ing to  estimate  how  far  they  are  in  accordance  with  the 
views  set  forth  in  the  greatest  religious  handbook  of  all 
time,  we  are  following  a  course  which  is  as  necessary  as 
it  is  crucial.  Briefly  summarised  the  situation  is  as 
follows.  It  is  maintained  that  the  method  of  Organic 
Evolution  has  been  one  throughout — that  of  selection  ; 
what  has  changed  is  the  criterion  of  selection.  Organic 
Evolution  has  been  a  process  of  continued  adaptation  to 
Environment,  the  resultant  of  various  factors,  but  at 
marked  stages  in  the  progress  of  life  the  character  of  the 
conditioning,  i.e.  the  survival-determining,  factor,  has 
changed.  At  first  it  was  power  of  food-assimilation, 
then  advance  in  methods  of  reproduction,  thereafter 
physical  force,  then  cunning  or  mind,  and  with  the 
appearance  of  man  the  criterion  has  become  increasingly 
a  moral  one.  There  seems  to  be  no  reason  why  with  the 
appearance  of  man  the  general  method  of  evolution 
should  change.  There  is  nothing  in  the  history  of  man, 
physical  or  spiritual,  to  indicate  either  that  it  should 
change  or  that  it  has  changed.  Further,  we  have  seen 
reason  to  believe  that  man  is  only  now  in  process  of 
attaining  individuality,  and  that  this  must  be  essentially 
a  spiritual  process.  Does  Scripture,  then,  in  any  way 
support  the  contention  that  eternal  life — continuity  of 
personal  existence — is  morally  conditioned,  that  man,  in 
short,  is  immortable  rather  than  immortal,  and  can  only 
realise  his  true  destiny  as  he  fulfils  his  place  in  the  moral 
order  ? 

174 


276     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

The  answer  to  this  question — for  the  problem  is  not 
new — can  be  attempted  with  a  greater  measure  of  cer- 
tainty to-day  than  in  any  previous  period,  and  not  merely 
because  we  know  so  much  better  what  the  teaching  of 
Scripture  is.  Just  as  in  an  earlier  age  ignorance  of  any 
other  mode  of  creation  compelled  interpretation  of  the 
opening  verses  of  Genesis  in  terms  of  a  doctrine  of  Special 
and  Immediate  Creation,1  so  lack  of  knowledge  of  the 
conditions  of  life  left  other  passages  of  Scripture  open  to 
interpretations  that  seem  henceforth  untenable.  But, 
in  particular,  study  of  the  mental  presuppositions  and 
general  religious  outlook  of  the  hitherto  little  known 
period  between  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  has  furnished 
us  with  many  of  the  elements  out  of  which  the  various 
eschatological  schemes  of  the  later  book  were  woven, 
and  enables  us  to  understand  what  exactly  was  in  the 
mind  of  the  writers  and  speakers  in  the  use  of  certain 
phrases  and  the  enunciation  of  certain  statements.  The 
wonder  of  it,  the  proof  of  the  deep  and  lasting  truth — 
the  inspiration — of  Scripture  is  seen  in  the  fact  that 
there  is  no  disharmony  between  these  statements  and 
the  conclusions  that  appear  forced  upon  us  on  the 
strength  of  other  considerations. 

The  supreme  contribution  of  Israel  to  the  world  was 
its  monotheistic  doctrine  of  God.  In  the  collection  of 
writings  known  as  the  Old  Testament,  apart  from  those 
books  and  sections  of  books  that  profess  to  deal  primarily 
with  the  actual  history  of  Israel,  we  have  a  record  of  the 
religious  experiences  of  some  of  the  choicest  souls  amongst 
a  people  who  were  led  through  them  to  a  unique  con- 
ception of  God.  How  this  knowledge  of  God,  at  first 
crude  and  realistically  anthropomorphic,  was  purified  and 
deepened  as  the  result  of  national  and  personal  experience 
is  one  of  the  special  interests  of  the  Scriptural  page. 
But  from  the  beginning  this  consciousness  of  God  is 
represented  as  something  peculiarly  vivid  and  direct, 
and  so  completely  satisfying  as  to  constitute  in  itself  the 

1  The  Spiritual  Interpretation  of  Nature,  p.  280. 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    277 

very  essence  of  life.  At  every  stage  in  the  history  there 
is  also  evidence  of  the  reaction  of  the  religious  Hebrew 
not  merely  against  the  ideas  and  ideals  of  the  peoples 
living  amongst  and  around  him  in  Palestine,  but  against 
the  more  impressionable  of  his  own  race  who  failed  to 
hold  to  the  conception  of  the  true  God  amidst  the  welter 
of  superstition,  debasing  folklore,  and  general  low  moral 
level  of  the  age.  At  the  same  time,  so  far  as  there  was 
any  idea  of  immortality  in  the  mind  of  the  Hebrew,  it 
took  the  form  principally  of  the  thought  of  the  identifica- 
tion or  corporate  solidarity  of  himself  with  his  people — 
God's  chosen  people.  In  the  earlier  stage  of  Israel's 
history  there  was  little  developed  sense  of  the  value  of 
the  individual  life.  Not  indeed  before  the  time  of 
Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel,  after  the  seventh  century  B.C.,  was 
there  clear  recognition  of  individual  responsibility  and 
retribution.  The  unit  was  the  family,  and  Achan's  sons 
and  daughters  suffered  with  him  in  expiation  of  his 
guilt.1  Yet  it  was  just  in  these  sons  and  daughters  that 
as  a  rule  the  Hebrew  felt  his  immortality  to  lie — in  the 
merging  of  himself  in  his  family  and  tribe  and  nation. 
And  as  there  could  be  no  question  about  the  continuance 
of  his  people — for  they  represented  the  Kingdom  of  God 
amongst  men — and  as  its  destiny,  however  subjected  to 
change,  was  always  envisaged  as  worked  out  upon  the 
earth,  the  thought  of  death  and  what  came  after  it  did 
not  play  any  outstanding  part  in  this  connection.  God 
was  at  work  in  His  world,  and  men  received  at  His  hands 
judgment  and  retribution  here  and  now.  To  the  Hebrew 
mind  as  expressed  particularly  in  the  Psalms,  the  con- 
sciousness of  God  was  so  real,  and  so  ultimate  a  factor 
in  this  present  life,  that  its  thought  busied  itself  little 
with  the  question  of  a  future  state  or  of  the  future  at  all 
except  in  relation  to  the  nation.  It  was  only  when  the 
experience  of  the  Exile  threatened  and  ultimately  seemed 
to  destroy  the  outlook  for  the  nation  that  the  pious  soul 
was  more  and  more  driven  in  upon  itself  and  God.  Re- 
1  Joshua  7  •*. 


278     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

flections  that  must  have  been  bitter  to  a  developing  sense 
of  individuality — as  that  death  would  after  all  prevent 
a  man  from  sharing  in  the  hopes  of  the  nation — became 
poignant  when  these  very  hopes  themselves  vanished  in 
thin  air.  Then  it  was  that,  troubled  also  by  the  manifest 
lack,  as  it  appeared,  of  the  retributive  element  in  life,  the 
consciousness  of  God  and  fellowship  with  Him  became 
even  more  than  ever  the  solace  of  the  disquieted  heart, 
until  the  thought  became  intolerable  that  such  fellowship 
could  be  interrupted  by  death — '  Thou  wilt  not  leave  my 
soul  to  Sheol ;  neither  wilt  thou  suffer  thine  holy  one  to 
see  corruption.' l 

Apart  then  from  the  patriotic  ideas  outlined  above, 
Hebrew  thought  was  not  at  first  much  concerned  with  the 
future,  and  still  less,  speculatively,  with  the  state  of  the 
dead,  otherwise  than  to  acquiesce,  on  the  whole  indiffer- 
ently, in  the  popular  beliefs  which  it  shared  by  inheritance 
with  the  surrounding  and  autochthonous  peoples.  These 
were  connected  with  Sheol,  the  place  of  the  dead,  a  con- 
struct of  the  imagination  even  to  the  localising  of  it  in 
'  the  lower  parts  of  the  earth.'  2  To  this  region  of  gloom 
and  darkness  all  went  at  death,  the  great  ones  of  the  earth 
as  well  as  their  servants,  the  prisoner  together  with  his 
taskmaster.  It  was  an  apathetic  condition  of  mere 
existence,  void  of  all  moral  distinctions  :  all  that  we 
associate  with  the  word  vitality  was  gone.  Sheol  was 
an  abode  of  flaccid,  shadowy,  dream-like  beings — what 
Odysseus  calls  '  the  pithless  heads  of  the  dead.'  3  '  Thou 
too  art  made  weak  as  we  '  are  the  words  with  which  they 
greet  a  regal  newcomer.4  Much  as  in  the  Homeric  con- 
ception, the  dead  were  thought  of  as  going  on  existing 
in  some  sense  or  another,5  but  it  was  not  the  'soul'  that 

1  Ps.  16 1B.  •  PS.  63  •. 

8  Odyss.  ii.  24-55.  The  rendering  is  by  Prof.  H.  A.  A.  Kennedy 
In  several  respects  the  Hebrew  and  Homeric  conceptions  were  akin. 

4  Is.  14  •-». 

*  At  the  same  time  it  seems  futile  to  attempt  to  draw  distinctions, 
as  is  sometimes  done,  between  '  life  '  and  '  existence  '  where  personality 
is  concerned.  The  only  existence  that  means  anything  even  in  the 
case  of  animals  is.a  condition  of  life.  '  But,  in  fact,'  says  Dr.  R.  F 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    279 

survived ;  the  dead  are  called  '  shades '  rather  than 
'  souls  '  or  '  spirits  '  in  the  Old  Testament.  The  early 
Hebrew  did  not  think  of  annihilation  as  we  conceive  the 
term  :  this  conception  did  not  appear  till  late,  and  then 
perhaps  rather  by  implication  so  far  as  the  actual  records 
go.  Yet  Sheol  was  so  much  the  land  of  silence  and  for- 
getfulness  that  existence  there  practically  amounted  to 
nonentity.  It  was  perhaps  a  sort  of  outgrowth  of  the 
family  grave.  Originally  it  was  not  thought  of  as 
within  Yahweh's  jurisdiction,1  although  later  thought 
on  the  omnipresence  of  God  could  not  consider  Him  as 
excluded  even  there.2  Nevertheless  the  character  of 
Sheol  was  unaffected.  The  stories  of  translations,  e.g.  of 
Elijah,  show  that  no  real  life  beyond  death  was  expected 
for  the  average  man.8  The  whole  pathos  of  the  appeals 
and  protests,  and  of  the  ventures  of  hope,  e.g.  in  the  Book 
of  Job  and  the  Psalms,  lies  in  the  belief  that  God  was  not 
there,  and  that  death  as  involving  existence  there  meant 
separation  from  Him. 

It  is  important  therefore  to  note  that  the  Old  Testa- 
ment is  not  really  interested  in  personal  immortality 
except  so  far  as  that  involves  a  personal  relationship  to 
God.  There  is  indeed  no  suggestion  in  the  Old  Testament 
that  man  was  created  immortal.4  To  the  Hebrew  way 
of  thinking,  any  idea  of  an  inherent  immortality  would 
have  made  man  too  independent  of  God.  The  whole 
doctrine  of  Sheol  is  but  a  pagan  survival  of  the  pre- 
Yahwistic  beliefs  of  Israel,  held  in  common  with  their 
prehistoric  kinsfolk ;  there  is  nothing  of  revelation  about 
it.  Such  teaching  as  there  is  was  simply  the  definitely 
expressed  conviction  that  those  who  are  in  complete 

Weymouth  (in  a  statement  quoted  in  The  Problem  of  Immortality  t  by 
Dr.  E.  Petavel,  pp.  492,  493),  '  the  Greek  mind  did  not  reckon  the 
existence  of  the  disembodied  spirit  as  existence  at  all.  .  .  .  The  soul 
existed,  a  Greek  would  tell  you,  but  only  "  as  a  shadow  or  a  dream  " 
(Horn.  Odyss.  xi.  206).' 

1  Pa.  6  »,  Is.  38  ",  »•          •  Amos  9  «,  Ps.  139  •.         »  Cf.  Ps.  89  4I. 

4  Eccles.  12  7  might  appear  to  supply  an  exception,  but  the  very 
late  date  of  that  work  and  the  general  drift  of  its  teaching  remove  it 
far  from  the  main  current  of  O.  T.  thought. 


280     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

communion  and  perfect  fellowship  with  God  would 
overleap  Sheol — '  God  will  redeem  my  soul  from  the 
power  of  Sheol :  for  he  shall  receive  me.'  l  The  sense 
of  reality  of  present  personal  union  with  God  was  so  great 
as  to  make  the  thought  of  death  shrink  into  the  back- 
ground. The  question  arose,  '  Why  should  death  inter- 
rupt this  fellowship  with  God  ?  '  and  gradually  the 
position  was  reached  that  there  is  a  certain  relationship 
which  implies  immortality  as  a  natural  result :  a  man  in 
correspondence  with  God,  '  as  a  righteous,  religious 
being,'  2  cannot  but  be  immortal.  Immortality  then,  in 
the  Old  Testament  sense,  is  morally  conditioned.  '  The 
essential  thing  is  the  relation  of  men  to  God.  This  con- 
tains in  it  the  fate  of  men.  And  this  fate  will  yet  reveal 
itself.'  3 

The  scant  references  to  the  idea  of  resurrection  in  the 
Old  Testament  are  connected  with  an  entirely  different 
train  of  thought.  In  spite  of  all  appearances,  the  religious 
Hebrew  held  fast  to  his  idea  of  the  eventual  establishment 
of  the  Messianic  Kingdom,  the  Kingdom  of  God,  upon 
earth.  It  was  simply  the  expression  of  his  belief  that 
after  all  the  world  in  which  he  found  himself  was  God's 
world,  that  He  was  '  the  decisive  moral  force  in  the  uni- 
verse '  4  and  would  one  day  vindicate  Himself  as  such. 
The  Day  of  the  Lord  meant  the  inauguration  of  this 
Messianic  Kingdom  of  righteousness  upon  earth  with 
Jerusalem  as  its  capital,  and  Israel  as  the  elect  people  in 
whom  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  were  to  be  blessed.  It 
was  felt  that  the  happiness  of  that  reign  would  not  be 
complete  unless  it  was  shared  in  by  those  who  in  the  past 
had  been  loyal  to  the  hope,  but  had  died  before  it  was 
realised.  Plainly  such  participation  involved  a  resurrec- 
tion— the  body  had  to  be  reanimated  by  the  '  shade  ' 
which  was  in  Sheol  —  and  the  idea  is  first  associated 

1  Ps.  49  »  ;   cf.  also  73  24. 

*  A.  B.  Davidson,  Theology  of  the  Old  Testament,  p.  519. 

8  A.  B.  Davidson,  op.  cit.  p.  461. 

4  Prof.  R.  G.  Macintyre,  The  Other  Side  of  Death,  p.  346. 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    281 

in  the  Old  Testament  with  the  people  rather  than 
with  individuals.  But  it  is  a  resurrection  of  righteous 
Israelites  only.  '  Thy  dead  men  (Israel)  shall  arise  :  the 
inhabitants  of  the  dust  shall  awake  and  shout  for  joy  ; 
for  a  dew  of  lights  is  thy  dew,  and  the  earth  shall  bring 
to  life  the  shades.' 1  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  stated  just 
as  definitely  that  the  heathen  oppressors  '  are  dead,  they 
shall  not  live ;  they  are  shades,  they  shall  not  rise.'  2 
But  consequent  upon  the  actual  course  of  the  national 
history,  so  full  of  unmerited  suffering  at  the  hands  of 
oppressors,  the  conviction  gained  ground  that  in  this 
future  order  inequalities  must  be  put  right  in  order  that 
the  vindication  of  the  oppressed  be  complete.  As  early 
as  350  B.C.  a  shaping  of  the  doctrine  of  retribution  can 
be  traced.  In  Daniel  12  2  the  thought  is  developed  of 
'  many  of  them  that  sleep  in  the  dust '  as  awaking,  '  some 
to  everlasting  life,  and  some  to  shame  and  everlasting 
contempt ' — a  selective  resurrection  of  the  good  and  of 
the  evil.  But  here  again  the  reference  is  distinctly  to 
the  establishment  of  the  Messianic  Kingdom  upon  earth  ; 
it  is  in  this  that  the  saints  of  God  will  share,  while  the 
wicked  are  raised  for  judgment  in  vindication  of  the 
inauguration  of  that  Kingdom.  Apart  from  this  single 
reference,  there  is  no  suggestion  in  the  Old  Testament 
of  any  destiny  for  the  wicked.3  So  far  as  it  is  concerned 
they  simply  cease  to  be,  in  any  sense  that  has  meaning 
or  content  for  personality :  they  merely  '  maunder  on  in 
Sheol,  and  may  maunder  on  eternally.'  4  Behind  all  these 
subjective  hopes  and  fancies,  however,  there  was  this  rooted 
conviction  that  active  relationship  with  God  meant  life, 
immortality,  something  that  death  could  not  really 
affect.  This  is  the  positive  viewpoint  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  in  a  sense  there  is  no  other ;  for  to  speak  of '  a 

1  Is.  26  «  (trans,  as  in  Prof.  Charles'  art.  Eschatology,  Encyc.  Bib. 
pt.  ii.  col.  1354),  a  late  passage,  probably  of  the  fourth  century  B.C. 

»  Is.  26  "  (R.V.  marg.). 

*  Unless  such  a  passage  as  Ps.  49  "  can  be  interpreted  apart  from 
the  preceding  verse  12.  But  see  Ps.  146  *. 

«  For  the  phrase  the  writefjs  indebted  to  Prof.  A.  C.  Welch. 


282     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

doctrine  of  immortality '  in  connection  with  an  existence 
in  which  there  is  neither  remembrance  of  God,1  nor  of 
former  things,2  seems  like  playing  with  words.  The  Old 
Testament  writers  manifestly  show  that  they  were  not 
otherwise  interested  in  the  question  of  immortality — as 
if  the  implication  of  their  message  was  that  God  did  not 
wish  men  to  think  of  a  future  existence  as  a  refuge,  that 
the  future  was  just  a  continuation  of  this  life,  and  that  if 
a  man  could  not  and  did  not  find  God  here  and  now,  he 
was  not  likely  to  find  him  elsewhere  or  in  any  other 
existence.  That  only  was  life  where  a  man  was  in  vital 
fellowship  with  God  ;  anything  else  was  mere  existence. 
Heaven  was  just  the  presence  of  God,  a  condition  that  the 
Old  Testament  saint  felt  he  could  experience  in  the  com- 
pletest  measure  here  on  earth.  There  might  be,  must  be, 
change  on  the  occasion  of  the  Day  of  the  Lord,  but  the 
perfect  Messianic  Kingdom  was  to  be  on  earth.  It  was 
the  Hebrew  conception  of  God  that  determined  all  the 
rest  of  their  thinking,  and  while  the  bent  of  the  Hebrew 
mind  may  not  have  lain  in  the  direction  of  speculative 
construction,  they  nevertheless  mediated  a  knowledge  of 
God  through  a  direct  experience  of  Him,  that  produced 
in  them  a  conviction  that  was  greater  and  more  helpful 
to  mankind  than  any  mere  system  of  thought. 

In  the  Apocalyptic  period  which  stretches  from  the 
last  two  centuries  B.C.  to  past  the  end  of  the  first  century 
A.D.,  there  were  further  modifications  of  some  of  the  pre- 
ceding conceptions,  again  under  the  stress  of  actual 
historical  events  which  tried  the  faith  of  the  righteous. 
Apocalyptic  was  really  a  sort  of  Jewish  philosophy  of 
religion,  an  attempt  to  reveal  the  future  purpose  of  God 
for  the  world  with  a  view  to  the  establishment  of  faith  in 
difficult  days.  In  the  terminology  of  another  field,  it 
may  be  said  that  the  writers  of  Apocalyptic  books  were 
Catastrophists  as  opposed  to  the  older  Uniformitarians 
(the  prophets)  who,  on  the  whole,  looked  for  a  gradual 
moral  reformation  in  the  life  of  the  nation,  although  some 

»  Ps.  6  •.  a  Eccles.  i  ". 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    283 

of  them,  as  e.g.  Amos  and  Isaiah,  were  not  forgetful  of 
'  the  day  of  the  Lord.'  To  the  Apocalyptic  mind  things 
had  gone  too  far ;  the  world  was  too  evil  to  be  the  possible 
subject  of  moral  change.  Nothing  short  of  a  complete 
ending  of  the  present  dispensation,  and  the  commence- 
ment of  a  new  age  visibly  inaugurated  by  God  Himself, 
would  be  of  any  avail.  But  the  Apocalyptist  was  more 
supermundane  in  his  ideas  of  the  Messianic  Kingdom 
than  the  Old  Testament  prophet :  he  tended  on  the 
whole  to  push  the  consummation  more  and  more  into 
the  future.  There  was,  however,  strictly  no  advance 
on  the  Old  Testament  conception  of  the  attainment  of 
immortality,  although  in  a  few  instances  ideas  are  ex- 
pounded about  the  manner  of  resurrection  which  recall 
St.  Paul's  teaching  about  the  spiritual  body  (i  Cor. 
15  B5-40).  The  doctrine  of  retribution,  which  became  a 
leading  tenet  of  the  Pharisees,  appears  in  all  the  Apocalypses 
amidst  a  plethora  of  speculations,  some  of  which  are  very 
confusing.  In  connection  with  the  doctrine  of  a  resur- 
rection the  Jews  in  their  exclusiveness  were  inclined  at 
first,  as  we  have  seen,  to  identify  the  righteous  with 
righteous  Jews.  Nevertheless  throughout  the  Apocalyptic 
development,  the  contrast  between  Jews  and  non-Jews 
(i.e.  Gentiles)  becomes  less  strongly  emphasised  than 
formerly.  The  contrast  now  was  rather  between  righteous 
and  sinner.  Sheol  has  become  an  intermediate  state 
where  souls  await  the  Final  Judgment :  formerly  it  had 
represented  the  one  state  in  death.  Added  to  it  also  are 
Gehenna,  a  place  of  torment  and  the  abode  of  the  worst 
type  of  sinners,  and  Paradise,  the  home  of  the  righteous — 
heaven.  On  this  view  Gehenna  was  the  end  for  the 
wicked,  although  it  is  not  always  easy  to  say  if  their 
punishment  was  clearly  thought  of  as  '  everlasting,'  or 
whether  rather  the  idea  of  annihilation  was  not  directly 
expressed.  Josephus,  interpreting  the  view  of  the  Phari- 
sees in  the  time  of  our  Lord,  states  that  they  believed 
'  that  souls  have  an  immortal  vigour  in  them  and  that 
under  the  earth  there  will  be  rewards  and  punishments, 


284     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

according  as  they  have  lived  virtuously  or  viciously  in 
this  life ;  and  the  latter  are  to  be  detained  in  an  ever- 
lasting prison,  but  that  the  former  shall  have  power  to 
revive  and  live  again.' 1 

It  will  not  be  surprising  if  we  find  in  the  canonical 
writings  of  the  New  Testament  a  certain  correspondence 
with  this  rapid  progressive  development  of  popular  reli- 
gious thought,  but  it  is  not  germane  to  our  purpose  to 
attempt  to  trace  the  influence  of  Apocalyptic  in  the 
New  Testament.2  This  brief  survey  of  the  development 
of  thought  in  the  Old  Testament  and  Apocalyptic  times 
will,  however,  have  made  it  clear  that  we  need  not  expect 
a  complete  and  final  system  of  doctrine  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  it  is  useless  to  pretend  that  we  find  one.  It  is, 
however,  of  vital  importance  to  attempt  to  reach  the 
actual  standpoint  of  these  inspired  pages  upon  the 
question  of  the  attainment  of  immortality.  With  vague 
speculations  about '  a  larger  hope  '  we  are  not  concerned.3 
Nothing  so  robs  life  of  its  tremendous  seriousness  and 
meaning,  reducing  it  to  the  level  of  a  marionette-show, 
and  belittling  man's  fateful  capacity  to  choose  life  or 
death,  as  the  amiable  outlook  of  Universalism.  Yet 
Scripture  is  sufficiently  and  gravely  clear  in  its  indica- 
tions as  to  the  way  of  life. 

Let  us  take  first  the  teaching  of  our  Lord.  Considered 
as  a  whole  it  is  pre-eminently  a  treatise  upon  the  attain- 
ment of  eternal  life.  There  is,  our  Lord  teaches,  a  physical 
life  and  a  spiritual  life,  but  the  latter  is  the  real  life.  The 
former  is  terrestrially  conditioned  and  relatively  un- 
important :  its  conditions  do  not  persist  in  the  hereafter. 
There  is  nowhere  any  unequivocal  suggestion  in  His 
teaching  of  the  inherent  immortality  of  the  soul.4  '  The 

1  Antiquities,  book  xviii.  chap.  i.  (Whiston's  trans.). 

1  For  an  excellent  summary  see  Dr.  J.  H.  Leckie,  The  World  to  Come 
and  Final  Destiny. 

*  Dr.  Leckiel  states  that  he  is  '  not  disposed  to  agree  with  those 
who  find  the  idea  of  universal  salvation  in  any  one  of  the  sayings  of 
Jesus  '  (op.  cit.  p.  155). 

4  There  is  only  one  instance  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels  (Matt.  10  *8) 
where  Jesus  is  represented  as  using  the  word  $\>xti,  soul,  so  as  -to 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    285 

immortality  of  the  soul  '  in  fact  is  \iot  a  Biblical  phrase  : 
it  is  not  even  a  Biblical  conception.  '  At  the  resurrection/  l 
says  our  Lord,  using  the  expression  of  the  Sadducees, 
which  meant  nothing  to  them,  but  which  they  had  em- 
ployed for  the  sake  of  an  argument,  '  at  the  resurrection 
(i.e.  in  the  future  life),  people  neither  marry  nor  are 
married.  As  for  the  resurrection  of  the  dead  —  Abraham 
and  Isaac  and  Jacob  are  alive  now,  because  God  was 
their  God  :  they  were  and  are  in  a  conscious  vital  re- 
lationship to  Him,  and  therefore  they  live.'  Further, 
the  story  of  the  Transfiguration  brings  before  us,  as 
Professor  Macintyre  points  out,2  Moses  and  Elijah  in  full 
possession  of  what  St.  Paul  terms  '  the  spiritual  body.' 
What  is  true  of  these  patriarchs  may  be  true  for  all. 

Jesus  Christ  then  set  before  men  the  conditions  of  life 
or  of  death  in  the  ultimate  senses  of  these  words,  warning 
them  of  the  difficulty  of  attaining  life.  '  Enter  ye  in  by 
the  narrow  gate  :  for  wide  is  the  gate,  and  broad  is  the 
way,  that  leadeth  to  destruction,  and  many  be  they  that 
enter  in  thereby.  For  narrow  is  the  gate,  and  straitened 
the  way,  that  leadeth  unto  life,  and  few  be  they  that 
find  it.'  3  In  clearest  and  sharpest  contrast  Jesus  dis- 
tinguishes between  the  alternatives,  '  life  '  (£&»?)  and 
'  destruction  '  (a-n-caXeia)  .  Similarly  in  majestic  sim- 
plicity and  unassailable  directness,  He  says  :  '  Whosoever 
would  save  his  life  (^rvxn,  soul,  or  life)  shall  lose  it  ;  and 
whosoever  shall  lose  his  life  for  my  sake  and  the  gospel's 
shall  save  it.'  4  By  the  '  soul  '  or  '  life  '  Jesus  means  the 
core  of  a  man's  personality,  his  very  self,  the  citadel  of 
his  being.  But  there  is  nothing  static  in  His  thought 
about  the  ^v-^.  It  is  something  charged  with  potenti- 


suggest  a  reference  to  the  future.  Scholars,  however,  give  what  seem 
to  be  cogent  reasons  for  considering  that  the  more  exact  rendering  of 
our  Lord's  words  is  found  in  the  corresponding  passage  in  Luke  (12  *•  ') 
where  the  reference  is  to  a  double  possible  fate  for  the  body  in  the 
present.  The  Matthew  version  is  apparently  later,  and  expanded  in 
keeping  with  certain  well-marked  theological  tendencies  of  the  writer. 
Cf.  H.  B.  Sharman,  The  Teaching  of  Jesus  About  the  Future,  p.  267. 

»  Matt.  22"-";  Luke  20  «•«•.         «  The  Other  Side  of  Death,  p.  170. 

•  Matt.  7  "»  ".  «  Mark  8  »». 


a86     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

ality  and  a  capacity  for  self-realisation,  something  that 
may  be  '  won/  l  The  full  attainment  and  possession  of 
it  are  correlated  by  Him  with  a  certain  manner  of  life. 
To  closely  hold  and  attempt  to  realise  the  -^v^n  in  selfish 
satisfaction  is  to  starve  it  into  non-existence  ;  it  is  to 
lose  or  forfeit  oneself.  There  is  no  direct  reference  of 
Jesus  to  the  V^U%T;  in  which  He  speaks  as  if  He  thought 
of  it  as  necessarily  having  a  life  other  than  that  of  the 
present.  He  thought  of  it  rather  as  something  capable 
indeed  of  self-realisation  under  certain  conditions,  but 
'  fearfully  liable  to  self-destruction  by  becoming  self- 
centred.'  a  A  man's  life,  then,  may  be  lost :  he  may  be 
'  mulcted  of  his  soul.'  This  is  the  heaviest  penalty — the 
loss  of  all  that  possible  development  means.  Nor  was 
His  teaching  on  this  matter  directly  connected  with 
any  question  of  rewards  and  punishments.  Indeed,  any 
statements  in  the  Gospels  along  this  particular  line  are 
largely  secondary,  if  not  late  additions.8  Eternal  life  is 
a  matter  of  union  with,  of  keeping  hold  of,  God.  The 
reward  of  the  good  life  simply  is  its  persistence,  because 
it  is  in  relationship  with  God.  The  soul  that  does  not 
understand  the  worth  of  God  understands  nothing.  If 
to  any  human  being,  God  the  reality  is  nothing,  the  fear 
of  eternal  punishment  will  mean  still  less.4 

1  Luke  21  1B. 

*  H.  B.  Sharman,  The  Teaching  of  Jesus  About  the  Future,  p.  269. 

8  E.g.  Matt.  25  81  &.,  a  poetical  and  parabolic  passage  dealing  with 
a  judgment  of  the  nations  prior  to  the  inauguration  of  the  Messianie 
Kingdom  upon  earth,  and  probably  Luke  16  "  ff. — a  parable,  whose 
primary  teaching,  if  not  decisively  clear,  is  certainly  not  intended  to 
be  informative  of  the  conditions  of  a  future  existence.  Jesus  often 
used  old  frameworks  into  which  He  fitted  new  conceptions,  just  as  one 
may  see  captured  howitzer  shells  set  up  in  public  places  as  collecting 
boxes  for  charitable  objects. 

4  After  a  careful  study  of  the  different  texts,  Dr.  Sharman  concludes 
that '  Jesus  never  used  "  Gehenna  "  in  any  other  sense  than  the  valley 
of  Hinnom,  that  is,  the  valley  of  Hinnom  as  the  depository  of  the 
offal  of  Jerusalem,  the  carcasses  of  animals,  and  the  bodies  of  criminals 
who  by  the  special  nature  of  their  crimes  were  refused  the  rites  of 
burial  so  sacred  to  the  Jews.  Wherever  Gehenna  appears  in  any  other 
sense  in  the  gospels,  most  especially  when  it  is  conceived  of  as  the  place 
of  future  and  eternal  punishment,  the  comparative  study  of  documents 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    287 

Again,  we  read,  '  Jesus  said  unto  them,  The  sons  of 
this  world  marry,  and  are  given  in  marriage  :  but  they 
that  are  accounted  worthy  to  attain  to  that  world,  and 
the  resurrection  from  the  dead,  neither  marry,  nor  are 
given  in  marriage.' l  '  They  that  are  accounted  worthy  to 
attain '  :  our  Lord,  according  to  St.  Luke,  spoke  of  a 
resurrection  of  the  righteous  only  :  it  is  they  who  have 
attained.  The  resurrection  is  not  a  universal  thing  :  it 
deals  only  with  the  righteous.2  St.  Luke's  enlargement 
of  the  incident  is  Pauline.8  The  whole  Pauline  system,  as 
we  shall  see,  indeed  the  whole  Christian  system,  is  opposed 
to  a  resurrection  of  the  wicked.4  Or,  yet  once  again, 
when  the  rich  young  ruler  asked,  '  Good  Master,  what 
shall  I  do  to  inherit  eternal  life  ?  '  6  our  Lord's  answer 
is  framed  on  acceptance  of  the  basal  assumption  of  the 
question,  viz.  that  eternal  life  is  a  morally  conditioned 
survival  or  continuation  of  being.  Luke  in  this  passage 
interchanges  the  expression  '  eternal  life '  with  '  the 
Kingdom  of  God,'  implying  in  either  case  the  condition 
of  sonship.  A  corresponding  situation  with  the  tempting 
lawyer  is  similarly  resolved — '  This  do,  and  thou  shalt 
live.' 6 

In  many  passages  in  the  Fourth  Gospel  the  nature 
and  conditions  of  Eternal  Life  are  set  forth.  '  For  God 
so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave  his  only  begotten 
(unique)  Son,  that  whosoever  believeth  on  him  should 
not  perish,  but  have  eternal  life.' 7  '  /  am  the  resurrec- 
tion and  the  life,' 8  said  Jesus  to  Martha,  trying  to  get 

seems  to  show  with  clearness  that  this  sense  is  derived  by  subsequent 
modification  of  the  original  words  of  Jesus  '  (op.  cit.  pp.  262-263). 
Dr.  Sharman  also  adds  :  '  Jesus  himself  never  referred  to  "  torment  " 
or  "  fire  "  as  the  form  of  future  fate  for  the  unrighteous  '  (p.  265), 
i.e.  apart  from  the  indirect  reference  in  the  story  of  Dives  and  Lazarus. 

Luke  20  »»-»». 

There  is  also  a  distinct  sense  of  limitation  in  Luke  14  M. 

Cf.  parallel  passages  Matt.  22  "  ff.,  Mark  12  «  ff. 

'  As  regards  the  resurrection  itself,  the  teaching  of  Christ  seems 
clearly  to  have  been  that  only  the  righteous  attain  thereto  '  (Dr.  R.  H. 
Charles,  A  Critical  History  of  the  Doctrine  of  a  Future  Life,  p.  396). 

Lukei8"ff.  -Luke  to". 

John  3".  •  John  n  "  (R.V.). 


288     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

her  mind  away  from  the  '  Last-day-resurrection  '  con- 
ceptions of  her  early  upbringing  :  '  /  am  the  resurrec- 
tion and  the  life  .  .  .  whosoever  liveth  and  believeth  on 
me  shall  never  die.'  Living  union  with  Christ  and 
obedience  to  Him  make  eternal  life  a  present  possession. 
'  He  that  believeth  on  the  Son  hath  eternal  life  ;  but  he 
that  obeyeth  not  the  Son  shall  not  see  life,  but  the  wrath 
of  God  abide th  on  him.'  x  Throughout  this  Gospel  the 
idea  underlying  the  word  '  eternal '  loses  all  sense  of 
duration.  It  expresses  quality,  the  life  of  God,  the  life 
that  belongs  to  the  divine  order.  The  question  is  primarily 
one  of  the  attainment  or  non-attainment  of  life  through 
union  with  God,  i.e.  morally  conditioned.2 

In  the  writings  of  the  Apostle  Paul3  the  view  in  question 
is  very  remarkably  developed.  He  may  be  said  to  start 
from  the  position  that  God  '  alone  hath  immortality,'  4 
i.e.  is  alone  essentially  immortal.  As  for  himself,  he 
desires  to  share  in  the  experiences  of  Christ — '  if  by  any 
means  I  may  attain  unto  the  resurrection  from  the  dead.' 5 
For  St.  Paul  salvation  is  a  process — a  present  possession 
by  the  grace  of  God,  but  a  future  one  also  accomplished 
in  '  the  day  of  Christ.'  Life  (&rj)  in  St.  Paul's  large  syn- 
thetic sense  begins  here,  and  goes  on  without  a  break. 
'  Because  ye  are  sons,'  he  says  in  another  place,6  '  God 
sent  forth  the  Spirit  of  his  Son  into  our  hearts.'  The 
Spirit  implies  sonship,  or  assimilation  to  the  Divine 
Being.  The  process  then  is  quite  clear.  '  If  the  Spirit 
of  him  that  raised  up  Jesus  from  the  dead  dwelleth  in 
you,  he  that  raised  up  Christ  Jesus  from  the  dead  shall 
quicken  also  your  mortal  bodies  through  his  Spirit  that 

1  John  3  36  (R.V.). 

*  John  5  28-29  is  a  difficult  passage,  unrelated  to  the  immediate  con- 
text and  foreign  to  the  general  teaching  of  the  Gospel.  N.T.  scholars 
like  Wendt  (The  Teaching  of  Jesus,  vol.  i.  p.  256  n.)  consider  it  a  later 
addition. 

3  Cf.  throughout  Prof.  H.  A.  A.  Kennedy,  St.  Paul's  Conceptions  of 
the  Last  Things. 

4  i  Tim.  6  "  (R.V.).     Cf.  John  5  2«,  Rom.  i  ».  s  Phil.  3  ». 
8  Gal.  4  6.     The  idea  is  an  expansion  of  that  referred  to  above  under 

Luke  1 8  18  ff. 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    289 

dwelleth  in  you.'  l  '  In  either  case '  (for  there  are 
different  readings),  said  Principal  Denney,  '  a  share  in 
the  Christian  resurrection  is  conditioned  by  the  Spirit 
of  Christ.'  2  Spiritual  union  with  Jesus  Christ  is  the 
Resurrection,  involves  eternal  life.3  But  what  is  the 
alternative  ?  If  the  Spirit  of  him  that  raised  up  Jesus 
from  the  dead  does  not  dwell  in  a  human  heart,  what 
happens  ?  St.  Paul  faces  the  situation.  He  realises  that 
this  process  may  not  be  achieved  :  it  may  never  even 
commence.  To  begin  with,  the  '  natural '  man,  '  flesh 
and  blood,'  cannot  inherit  the  Kingdom  of  God.4  '  Many 
walk  whose  end  is  destruction.' 5  '  Then  sudden  destruc- 
tion cometh  upon  them.'  6  In  none  of  St.  Paul's  writings 
is  there  any  suggestion  of  a  resurrection  of  the  wicked. 
In  fact  such  an  idea  would  seem  to  go  contrary  to  his 
positive  conception  that  it  is  the  '  Spirit  of  life  in  Christ 
Jesus  '  which  sets  men  free  from  the  law  of  sin  and  of 
death. 7  Eternal  life  is  the  natural  result  of  a  vital  relation- 
ship with  God,  or  with  God  through  Jesus  Christ.  St.  Paul 
never  distinguishes  between  physical  and  moral  destruc- 
tion. His  ideas  of  destruction  and  life  are  synthetic, 
just  as  the  Old  Testament  ideas  were.  Our  subtle  and 
often  laboured  distinctions  were  not  before  his  mind. 
Nor  can  it  be  maintained  that  the  phrase  '  everlasting 
destruction '  (2  Thess.  I9)  differs  radically  from  crn-coXem 
(destruction).  The  term  represents  the  common  Apoca- 
lyptic belief,  and  a  restoration  of  all  Israelites  is  nowhere 
expressly  stated  in  Apocalyptic  literature.8  It  may 
be  illegitimate  to  urge  on  the  evidence  available,  that 
the  term  '  destruction '  clearly  indicates  immediate 
extinction.9  We  may  associate  with  the  word  the  idea 

Rom.  8  u.  *  The  Expositor's  Greek  Testament  in  loco. 

Rom.  6a-«.  «  I  Cor.  15  «7-  60. 

Phil.  3  18-  1».     Cf.  also  the  very  positive  statement  in  Eph.  5  ». 

i  Thess.  5  3 ;  cf.  also  i  Tim.  6  •  ;   Rom.  9  »«,  2  7-«. 

Rom.  8  ». 

Volz,  Jiidische  Eschatologie,  referred  to  in  Kennedy,  op.  cit.  p.  278. 

It  may,  perhaps,  refer  to  a  final  disintegration  and  extinction  of 
personal  life  in  Sheol.  But  cf.  W.  Morgan,  The  Religion  and  Theology 
of  Paul :  '  If  a  study  of  these  terms  tfdvoros  (death),  drc&eux  (de- 

T 


2QO     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

of  being  robbed  of  all  that  life  means,  complete  paralysis 
of  being,  physical  and  ethical,  arrested  development  in 
some  pagan  conception  of  an  underworld ;  we  may 
even  allow  that  the  idea  of  extinction  in  our  sense  of 
the  term  was  never  clearly  before  the  Hebrew  mind, 
although  much  of  their  phraseology  seems  to  involve 
it.  The  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  it  is  difficult  to  extract 
a  positive  idea  out  of  the  word,  for  the  New  Testament 
leaves  it  unanalysed.  But  it  is  gratuitous  in  face  of  this 
great  range  of  statements  to  insist  on  schemes  of  Univer- 
salism  or  even  on  views  of  a  general  resurrection  to 
rewards  and  punishments,  as  the  central  line  of  Scripture 
teaching  upon  this  question.1  '  Die  Weltgeschichte  ist 
das  Weltgericht,'  said  Schiller,2  with  profoundest  truth. 
Every  day  is  a  day  of  judgment,  nationally  and  indi- 
vidually. Any  day  may  be  for  nation  or  individual  alike 
a  Great  Last  Day.  History  does  not  go  back  on  itself, 
and  the  evident  vindication  of  God  in  history — so  evident 
that  he  who  runs  may  read — as  the  moral  decisive  force 
does  not  require  that  it  should.  Ultimate  destiny  is  a 
matter  of  spiritual  condition.  '  Verily,  verily,  I  say 
unto  you,  He  that  heareth  my  word,  and  believeth  him 
that  sent  me,  hath  eternal  life,  and  cometh  not  into 
judgement,  but  hath  passed  out  of  death  into  life.'  3 

It  may  be  felt  that  some  further  qualification  is  required 
because  there  are  undoubtedly  a  few  passages  in  the 
Pauline  and  Lucan  writings  which  have  a  contrary 
significance.  There  is  indeed  in  all  the  New  Testament 
writers  a  certain  clashing  of  conceptions  borrowed  or 

struction),  leaves  the  question  of  annihilation  or  endless  suffering  an 
open  one,  the  general  turn  of  the  Apostle's  thought  points  conclusively 
to  the  former  '  (p.  238). 

1  The  unscriptural  doctrine  of  Purgatory  probably  arose  in  great 
part  through  the  reflection  of  the  Early  Church  upon  the  significance 
of  martyrdom.     Part  of  the  martyr's  reward  was  his  immediate  trans- 
lation to  heaven  :    but  for  other  members  of  the  Church  was  required 
a  period  of  education  and  purification  which  for  the  martyr,  in  conse- 
quence of  his  blood-bath,  was  unnecessary.     The  whole  belief  is  really 
an  effect  of  the  Martyr  Period  on  dogma. 

2  In  his  poem  of  the  Second  Period,  entitled  Resignation. 

3  John  5  ** ;  cf.  also  3  18-  19  and  9  3». 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    291 

inherited  from  very  different  sources.  Thus  there  some- 
times seems  to  be  a  hesitancy  between  accepting  the 
Platonic  conception  of  immortality  or  the  conception 
of  the  Davidic  Kingdom.  These  writers  were  not  so 
acutely  analytic  as  more  modern  generations,  and  felt 
no  difficulty  in  entertaining  ideas  that  seem  to  later 
thought  mutually  incompatible.  Bearing,  then,  in  mind 
that  neither  in  Gospels  nor  Pauline  writings  is  there  any 
system  of  clear  self-consistent  teaching  on  the  future 
state,  we  can  only  consider  these  isolated  passages  and 
attempt  to  reconstruct  the  particular  conditions  under 
which  they  came  into  being.  Such  a  passage  is  Acts 
24  14-  15,  in  which  St.  Paul  is  reported  as  speaking  thus 
of  himself,  '  After  the  Way  which  they  call  a  sect,  so  serve 
I  the  God  of  our  fathers,  believing  all  things  which  are 
according  to  the  law,  and  which  are  written  in  the 
prophets  :  having  hope  toward  God,  which  these  also 
themselves  look  for,  that  there  shall  be  a  resurrection 
both  of  the  just  and  unjust.'  Nothing  that  St.  Paul 
himself  writes  agrees  with  this  last  view,  and  we  can  only 
suppose  with  Professor  H.  A.  A.  Kennedy  that  in  his 
report  of  that  speech,  St.  Luke's  great  aim  was  to  show 
that  St.  Paul  was  not  such  an  anti-Judaist  as  the  dis- 
tinctively Christian  doctrine  of  his  epistles  made  him  out 
to  be.  St.  Paul  evidently  kept  some  of  the  old  eschato- 
logical  pictures  of  his  early  days  in  his  mind,  but  our 
duty  in  interpretation  is  to  follow  the  main  line  of  his 
religious  experience.1  Another  passage  whose  tenor  is 
similar,  is  the  following :  '  We  shall  all  stand  before 
the  judgment-seat  of  God.' 2  This,  however,  should  be 
read  in  close  association  with  the  immediately  succeeding 

1  This  passage  may  be  linked  with  John  5  2t-  29  and  Rev.  20  "•  13  as 
running  counter  to  the  general  N.T.  teaching  of  a  resurrection  of  the 
righteous  only.  According  to  Dr.  R.  H.  Charles,  the  Revelation 
passage  '  occurs  in  a  Judaistic  source  of  that  book.  ...  In  all  Jewish 
books  which  teach  a  resurrection  of  the  wicked,  the  resurrection  is  not 
conceived  as  a  result  of  spiritual  oneness  with  God,  but  merely  as  an 
eschatological  arrangement  for  the  furtherance  of  divine  justice  or 
some  other  divine  end  '  (op.  cit.  p.  444  n.). 

1  Rom.  14  10. 


292     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

verse  :  '  For  it  is  written,  As  I  live,  saith  the  Lord,  to 
me  every  knee  shall  bow,  and  every  tongue  shall  confess 
to  God.'  The  verse  is  a  free  translation  of  Isaiah  45  23, 
which  refers  to  the  coming  of  the  Messianic  Kingdom, 
when  every  nation  shall  worship  Him.  That  is  to  say, 
in  the  passage  in  question  we  see  a  survival  in  St.  Paul's 
mind  of  his  old  Jewish  eschatology,  a  reminiscence  in 
eschatological  picture  language  of  a  Jewish  conception  of 
a  universal  judgment.  For  St.  Paul,  however,  the  verdict 
of  God  is  given  now  :  that  indeed  is  justification.  In  the 
corresponding  passage,  2  Cor.  5  10,  he  is  speaking  only 
of  Christians,  just  as  in  I  Cor.  15  he  is  dealing  solely 
with  '  the  dead  in  Christ.'  1  It  is  of  the  utmost  import- 
ance to  note  throughout  that  resurrection  in  the  New 
Testament  is  '  resurrection  unto  life,'  that  in  this  funda- 
mental sense,  immortality  and  resurrection  are  really 
synonymous  terms,2  with  less  relation  to  a  future  point 
in  time  than  they  have  to  the  present,  full  experience 
of  which  is  entered  upon  at  death,  and  that  a  '  resurrec- 
tion body  '  is  a  very  different  conception  from  that  of  '  the 
resurrection  of  the  body.'  St.  Paul's  practical  interest, 
the  interest  growing  out  of  his  own  experience,  is  with 
those  who  are  '  united  with  Christ.'  Hence,  perhaps, 
in  part  the  reason  of  the  obscurity  in  his  teaching  regarding 
the  fate  of  the  wicked. 

Nor  is  there  any  indication  that  the  other  New  Testa- 
ment writers  thought  otherwise  on  this  great  topic. 
'  We  are  not  of  them  that  shrink  back  unto  perdition  ' 
(aTTwXeta)  says  the  unknown  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,3  '  but  of  them  that  have  faith  unto  the  gaining 
(or  acquisition,  TreptTro^tVt?)  of  the  soul.'  The  sugges- 


1  The  passage  i  Cor.  3  11-15  appears  to  be  associated  with  the  imagery 
of  2  Thess.  i  7'10,  which  certainly  does  not  represent  the  Apostle's  most 
mature  thought  upon  this  transcendent  theme  (cf.  e.g.  2  Cor.  5  1-10). 
Rom.  2  6"8  is  a  passage  that  seems  to  conflict  with  the  Apostle's  own 
doctrine  of  Justification  by  Faith,  unless  it  be  again  an  instance  of  the 
earlier  eschatology  remaining  with  him,  and  still  supplying  the  setting 
for  his  scant  and  obscure  teaching  concerning  the  fate  of  the  wicked. 

2  This  comes  out  especially  in  Paul's  latest  teaching,  2  Cor.  5  1'10. 
a  Heb.  10  39  (R.V.  marg.). 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    293 

tion  surely  is  that  eternal  life  is  an  achievement  through 
relationship  with  God.  Nor  is  the  other  side  of  the 
alternative  less  clearly  depicted  in  this  and  the  other 
epistolary  writings.  '  For  if  we  sin  wilfully/  says  this 
same  writer,  in  his  straightforward  way,  '  after  that  we 
have  received  the  knowledge  of  the  truth,  there  remaineth 
no  more  a  sacrifice  for  sins,  but  a  certain  fearful  expec- 
tation of  judgment,  and  a  fierceness  of  fire  which  shall 
devour  the  adversaries.'  1  '  The  only  sacrifice/  says  Dr. 
Dods,2  '  has  been  rejected,  and  there  is  no  other  sacrifice 
which  can  atone  for  the  rejection  of  this  sacrifice.'  And 
then  he  proceeds  to  quote  from  Delitzsch  as  follows  : 
'  The  meaning  is  not  merely  that  the  Jewish  sacrifices 
to  which  the  apostate  has  returned  have  in  themselves 
no  sin-destroying  power,  nor  even  that  there  is  no  second 
sacrifice  additional  to  that  of  Christ,  but  further  that  for 
a  sinner  of  this  kind  the  very  sacrifice  of  Christ  itself  has 
no  more  atoning  or  reconciling  power/  Or  again,  '  But 
these  people  ! — like  irrational  animals,  creatures  of  mere 
instinct,  born  for  capture  and  corruption,  they  scoff  at 
what  they  are  ignorant  of :  and  like  animals  they  will 
surfer  corruption  and  ruin,  done  out  of  the  profits  of  their 
evil-doing.'  3  Throughout  the  Johannine  Epistles  there 
is  maintained  the  solemn  contrast,  ultimate,  and  ethically 
determined,  between  those  '  who  are  of  the  cosmos '  and 
those  who  '  are  of  God.'  One  and  all  the  Apostolic 
writers  postulate  eternal  life  solely  for  those  who  in  their 
terminology  are  '  in  Christ/  '  have  passed  from  dead  unto 
living/  '  have  been  born  again/  have  been  made  '  new 
creatures.'  They  think  of  such  individuals  as  the  sub- 
jects of  some  qualitative  and  determining  change  in  the 
relationships  of  their  inmost  being,  their  real  life,  so  that 
it  is  now  responsive  to  the  true  environment  of  souls, 
which  is  God,  in  a  survival-determining  degree — '  // ' — 

1  Heb.  10  *••  "  ;   cf.  also  6  '  :   '  it  is  impossible  to  renew  them  again 
(Moffatt's  trans.)  unto  repentance.' 

1  The  Expositor's  Greek  Testament  in  loco. 

•  2  Peter  2  "  (Moffatt's  trans.) ;  cf.  also  James  i  ". 


294     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

it  is  a  conditional  '  if ' — '  the  Spirit  of  him  that  raised 
up  Jesus  from  the  dead  dwelleth  in  you,  he  that  raised  up 
Christ  Jesus  from  the  dead  shall  quicken  also  your  mortal 
bodies  through  his  Spirit  that  dwelleth  in  you.'  l  There 
may  be  dispute  as  to  the  validity  of  the  contention  :  but 
as  to  what  the  contention  is,  there  surely  can  be  none. 

Relief  is  sometimes  sought  from  what  is  felt  to  be  the 
inconvenient  and  uncompromising  character  of  these 
apostolic  affirmations  in  other  supposed  '  reconciling 
elements  '  in  their  teaching.  But  this  is  only  attained 
by  means  of  a  literalism  which  is  deprecated  in  the  case 
of  those  who  accept  the  statements  as  to  the  attainment 
of  eternal  life  at  their  face  value,  if  for  no  other  reason 
than  that  they  are  consonant  with  the  method  of  the 
organic  world  order  as  a  whole.  The  simple  fact  is  that 
God's  purposes  of  salvation  are  not,  and  cannot  be, 
achieved  in  the  individual  life  in  face  of  the  persistent 
refusal  of  the  individual,  inasmuch  as  God's  gift  to 
men  of  the  possibility  of  winning  freedom  is  the  neces- 
sary prius  to  the  possibility  of  becoming  a  son  of  God 
in  the  sense  of  the  apostolic  writers.  Love  is  the  one 
thing  in  the  world  that  cannot  be  forced  and  does  not 
force :  the  moment  compulsion  or  pressure  enters,  it 
ceases  to  be  Love.  Man  can  only  respond  spontane- 
ously to  the  Love  of  God  as  a  free  being,  otherwise  the 
response  can  have  no  value  even  to  God  Himself.  The 
heart  of  God  as  revealed  in  Christ  embraces  the  world  of 
men  in  purpose  and  intention,  and  all  human  souls  are 
precious  and  of  infinite  potentiality  and  worth,  but  the 
gift  of  God  can  always  be  refused  in  virtue  of  those  very 
capacities,  themselves  a  prior  gift,  which  alone  enable 
men  to  be  what  God  expects  of  them.  It  is  no  surrender 
of  the  Divine  Omnipotence  thus  to  realise  and  acknow- 
ledge the  possibilities  in  a  situation  which  only  arises  as 
the  result  of  a  self-limited  expression  of  the  most  funda- 
mental character  of  God,  viz.  His  Love. 

The  strength  of  the  Conditional  presentation  is  perhaps 

1  Rom,  8  ". 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    295 

most  strongly  felt  when  consideration  is  directed  to  the 
arguments  usually  urged  against  it.  To  insist  that  all 
analogy  fails  because  in  organic  evolution  selected  and  un- 
selected  forms  alike  eventually  perish,  is  really  to  affirm 
a  belief  in  the  physical  proximate  aspects  of  the  selecting 
Environment — organic  and  inorganic  alike — as  ultimate 
and  permanent,  instead  of  realising  that  they  are  but 
temporary  manifestations  of  the  Real  Environment  which 
is  spiritual,  and  with  which  man  is  primarily  concerned 
and  can  come  into  relationship  by  means  of  these  other 
aspects.  Further,  the  Conditional  view  stands  in  line, 
as  we  have  seen,  with  the  general  method  of  evolution 
which  has  been  selective  throughout,  with  a  gradual 
advance  in  the  character  of  the  survival-conditioning 
factor.  What  was  the  nature  of  the  specific  mental 
mutation  whereby  the  man-like  ape  became  the  ape-like 
man  we  do  not  know,  or  even  exactly  in  what  period  it 
occurred.  But  we  do  know  enough  of  the  process  to 
represent  to  ourselves  its  general  character.  We  know 
that  whatever  mental  and,  later,  moral  development 
we  recognise  in  these  ancestral  forms,  as  in  the  forms  of 
to-day,  took  place  as  the  result  of  the  interplay  of 
elements — potentialities — in  these  forms  with  the  En- 
vironment in  its  deepest  and  most  spiritual  sense,  as 
it  beckoned  and  unmasked  Itself  to  the  developing 
human  intelligence.  It  is  therefore  surprising  to  find 
the  statement  made  in  opposition  to  Sabatier's  brilliant 
if  somewhat  unconvincing  theory  of  Immortality  that 
'  the  human  species,  on  Sabatier's  theory,  has  for  one  of 
its  chief  characteristics,  not  the  actual  possession  of  a 
certain  quality,  but  the  power  of  attaining  it.  Surely,  if 
this  be  the  case,  mankind  stands  alone  among  all  the 
species  of  creation.  Every  member  of  every  other  race 
and  kind  must  conform  to  its  type.'  l  Every  member  of 
every  other  race  and  kind  has  done  nothing  of  the  kind, 
else  had  there  been  no  evolution.  It  is  in  virtue  of  the 
nonconformists  that  there  has  been  progress — those 

1  Dr.  J.  H.  Leckie,  The  World  to  Come  and  Final  Destiny,  p.  229. 


2g6     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

forms  that  did  not  conform  completely  to  their  present 
Environment,  to  do  which  meant  stagnation  and  death 
— but  conforming  to  other  elements  in  that  Environment, 
not  responded  to  by  the  others,  were  literally  metamor- 
phosed,1 transformed,  into  the  new  type.  It  is  further 
stated  2  in  the  same  work  that  '  the  real  weakness  of 
Condi tionalism  lies  in  its  two  great  denials,'  of  which  the 
first  is  that  of  the  indestructibility  of  the  soul.  But  this 
assumption  is  the  very  question  at  issue.  The  other 
denial  is  that  of  a  supposed  organic  unity  of  the  human 
race.  In  Leckie's  words,  '  Every  essential  property  of 
any  species  is  found  in  all  its  members.  A  quality  which 
is  the  possession  of  some  individuals  only,  of  any  given 
kind,  or  is  capable  of  being  developed  by  these,  but  is 
not  the  necessary  characteristic  of  all  the  species,  cannot 
be  one  of  the  distinguishing  marks  of  that  kind  of  creature. 
.  .  .  But  the  idea  that  such  a  great  thing  as  immortality 
can  be  a  merely  contingent  and  accidental  quality  is 
surely  out  of  the  question.  The  possession  of  unending 
life  by  any  number  of  individuals  realty  constitutes  them 
a  different  species.  .  .  .  And  so  it  is  evident  that  Con- 
ditionalism  really  destroys  the  unity  of  the  race  and 
divides  it  into  two  distinct  and  separate  species.  If 
there  exist,  at  any  given  time,  some  men  who  are  already 
immortal,  or  destined  to  achieve  an  endless  life,  and 
others  who  are,  and  will  remain,  evanescent  and  mortal, 
these  two  classes  are  so  distinct  as  to  belong  to  different 
orders  of  being.'  3  Now  it  would  only  lead  to  confusion 
to  point  out  that  in  the  opinion  of  some  competent 
authorities,  Neanderthal  man  did  as  a  matter  of  fact 
constitute  a  separate  species.  The  real  reply  to  the 
above  position  is,  rather,  that  it  misrepresents  the 
issue.  On  the  Conditional  view  all  men  are  immortable 
— potentially  immortal :  whether  that  characteristic  is 
developed  and  attained  is  a  matter  of  a  moral  relationship 
to  God.  Those  who  are  in  this  relationship  cannot  really 
die  :  those  who  are  not,  do  die,  if  there  is  any  truth  in  the 

1  Cf.  Rom.  12  2.  *  Op.  cit.  p.  245.  3  Op.  cit.  p.  248. 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    297 

Bible .  There  is  indeed  a  great  distinction.  But  it  is  simply 
caricature  of  '  the  evolutionary  form  of  the  Conditionalist 
theory '  to  state  that  it  '  regards  the  end  and  purpose  of 
the  world's  history  to  be,  not  the  creation  of  a  redeemed 
humanity,  but  the  production  of  a  selected  number  of 
perfect  individuals.' l  On  the  Conditional  view  the  pur- 
pose of  God  as  indicated  above  is  clear  and  manifest 
and  recognised  as  all  of  grace,  but  it  maintains  that  it 
cannot  be  achieved  in  the  case  of  those  who  deliberately 
put  themselves  out  of  all  relationship  to  Him.  '  From 
our  standpoint/  says  Dr.  Leckie,  '  it  is  incredible  that 
the  human  spirit  can  be  divested  of  moral  life,  any  more 
than  of  actual  existence.  To  us  it  seems  that  freedom, 
the  power  to  choose  the  right,  belongs  to  the  very  idea  of 
the  soul  and  cannot  be  taken  away.'  z  Exactly,  but  how 
is  freedom  merely  the  power  to  choose  the  right  1 

When  now  we  attempt  to  represent  to  ourselves  the 
nature  and  dynamics  of  this  change,  wrought  in  the 
secret  parts  of  a  man's  being,  we  quickly  reach  the  limits 
of  our  present  human  understanding.  All  progress  has 
been  by  way  of  change,  and  moral  change  as  latest  will 
naturally  be  concerned  with  the  highest  elements  in 
man's  being.  Yet  if  we  are  unable  to  indicate  with  pre- 
cision the  actual  moment  at  which  the  developing  con- 
sciousness of  the  child  expands  into  self-consciousness 
and  are  in  great  ignorance  as  to  the  character  and  agency 
of  this  change,  it  is  not  remarkable  that  we  experience 
difficulty  in  making  clear  to  ourselves  the  inward  working 
in  moral  change.  It  is  like  dealing  with  a  new  dimension. 
Moral  relationship  being  dependent  on  the  attainment  of 
self-consciousness  is  an  even  more  complex  and  subtle 
process  than  thought,  and  the  issues  of  the  latter  are 
complex  enough.  There  is  something  so  fundamental 
even  in  them,  that  they  affect  the  physical  life  of  the  in- 
dividual. '  As  he  thinketh  in  his  heart,  so  is  he,' 3  physi- 
cally and  spiritually  alike  :  it  is  the  kernel  of  truth  in  all 
theories  of  suggestion  and  auto-suggestion. 

1  Op,  cit.  p.  231.  *  Op.  cit.  p.  209.  8  Prov.  23  T, 


298     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

All  moral  advance,  both  racial  and  individual,  has 
been  directly  dependent  on  the  development  of  con- 
science, that  moral  sensitivity  to  the  Ultimate  Environ- 
ment in  virtue  of  which  the  individual  decides  his  actions 
or  reviews  them  in  relation  to  the  highest  that  he  knows, 
a  condition  which,  if  Freud  is  right,  is  operative  even  in 
our  dream  life.1  But  man,  as  we  have  seen,  appears  not 
yet  as  an  ^dividual,  self-determined  and  full  of  inward 
peace  and  harmony,  but  rather  as  a  being  in  process  of 
attaining  individuality,  full  of  disharmony  and  inward 
disquiet  as  the  dividuals  higher  and  lower — and  they 
may  be  legion — struggle  for  mastery.  If  then  immor- 
tality be  indeed  a  function  of  goodness  2  as  we  have  been 
driven  to  believe,  the  attainment  of  it  will  be  directly 
related  with  a  manner  of  life  resulting  from  a  changed 
outlook  and  inward  experience  which,  by  inducing  inward 
peace  and  harmony,  and  that  overcoming  of  the  divided 
self  with  freedom  from  the  dominance  of  the  lower  self, 
will  issue  in  wdividuality.  Now  relationship  is  of  the 
very  texture  of  Reality,  and  man  just  because  of  his 
mental  and  moral  constitution  is  able  to  come  into  re- 
lationship with  God  and  the  fellowman.  But  the  selfish 
or  self-filled  life  is  a  life  bereft  of  spiritual  ties  or  relation- 
ship, which  when  its  physical  metabolism  comes  to  an 
end,  must  by  reason  of  its  separateness  and  apartness, 
its  actual  spiritual  unrelatedness,  perish.  The  selfish 
being,  in  his  chosen  apartness  and  spiritual  isolation,  fails 
to  develop  the  higher  potentialities  in  human  life,  de- 
generation follows,  and  slipping  back  to  the  level  of  the 
predominantly  self-centred,  wellnigh  sub-human  stage, 
he  may  live  and  die  on  that  level.  On  the  other  hand, 
nothing  can  so  unify  and  integrate  a  human  life — make  it 
individual — as  Love.  To  have  and  to  hold  for  oneself  im- 
plies apartness  and  unrelatedness  ;  to  give  oneself  implies 

1  Cf.  his  account  of  the  intervention  of  what  he  calls  '  the  censor 
within  the  soul  '  in  preventing  the  gratification  of  desires  in  the  tragedies 
and  comedies  of  dream  life. 

8  Qf.  Proverbs  12  28,  could  we  be  sure  of  the  text.- 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    299 

relationship  and  union,  and  in  its  highest  and  completest 
form  that  relationship  to  God  which  means  eternal  life. 
Thus  is  it  literally  true  that  he  that  would  save  his  life 
shall  lose  it.  Just  in  proportion  as  we  give  ourselves  to 
the  service  of  others  in  love  do  we  find  the  Spirit  of  God 
dwelling  in  us  in  such  a  way  that  so  far  from  losing  our 
sense  of  distinct  being,  we  only  become  more  really  and 
fully  and  individually  ourselves.  In  conscious  depend- 
ence on  Him  we  realise  ourselves.  In  a  very  direct  way 
'  the  development  of  self-sacrifice  and  the  development 
of  the  sense  of  personal  distinctness  go  together.'  l  This 
was  the  experience  of  the  Apostle  Paul :  his  sacrifice  of 
himself  for  Christ's  sake  just  in  that  measure  made  him 
feel  sure  of  his  being  united  with  Him,  and  at  the  same 
time  aware  of  his  own  distinctive  developing  individuality. 
'  Not  I  live,'  he  said,  '  but  Christ  liveth  in  me  '  :  he  did 
not  say,  '  I  live  in  Christ.'  It  is  an  experience  which 
resolves  the  inner  disharmony — '  to  be  spiritually  minded 
is  life  and  peace.' 2  There  is  a  degree  of  conscious  willed 
relationship  with  God — '  I  am  in  my  Father  and  my 
Father  in  me  ' — in  which  it  is  not  possible  that  he  who 
has  attained  it  can  be  holden  of  death.  '  We  know  that 
we  have  passed  out  of  death  into  life,  because  we  love 
the  brethren.'  3 

Now  the  proof  of  all  this  is  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus 
Christ.  It  was  natural  for  the  apostles  to  correlate 
immortality  with  Him  because  He  was  perfectly  good, 
and,  as  a  matter  of  simple  fact,  He  brought  life  and 
immortality  to  light.  As  related  to  the  disciples,  the 
Resurrection  implies  their  objective  certainty  that  He 
whom  they  had  known  and  loved,  and  with  whom  they 
had  companied  in  the  days  of  His  flesh,  was  still  alive 
and  communicating  to  them  the  mind  of  God,  and  His 
purpose  for  the  world.  The  basis  of  the  Resurrection 
faith  was  not  so  much  the  Empty  Tomb  as  the  convic- 
tion of  the  disciples  that  in  these  post-resurrection  ex- 

1  O.  C.  Quick,  Essays  in  Orthodoxy,  p.  168. 

»  Kora.  8  •.  »  i  John  3  l« 


300     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

periences  they  had  been  seeing,  hearing,  and  speaking 
with  the  same  historic  Personality  whom  they  had 
followed  during  these  three  years,  and  thought  they  had 
lost  for  ever.  At  the  same  time,  the  fact  that  we  are 
just  beginning  to  understand  the  effects  of  mind  and 
particularly  of  emotion  upon  the  metabolism  and  actual 
constitution  of  the  body,  that  we  are  only  on  the  threshold 
of  our  knowledge  of  what  is  involved  in  the  far  from 
static  conception  of  personality,  and  that  we  have  no 
ability  whatever  to  estimate  what  would  be  the  effect  of 
a  sinless  spiritual  life  upon  its  physical  concomitant, 
forbids  us  to  relegate  the  story  of  the  Empty  Tomb  to 
the  realm  of  legend.  However  regarded,  the  Resurrec- 
tion is  the  supreme  proof  of  the  triumph  of  spirit  over 
matter. 

As  related  to  Himself,  our  Lord's  death  was  the  death 
of  that  particular  life,  the  great  climactic  act  of  a  life  of 
sacrifice,  lived  in  the  closest  relationship  to  God.  Such 
a  relationship  is  eternal :  '  it  was  not  possible  that  he 
should  be  holden  '  of  death.1  Such  a  relationship  we 
believe  to  be  creative.  Our  Lord's  Resurrection  body 
was  made  by  His  Spirit,  and  therefore  could  not  see 
corruption.  His  post-resurrection  life  was  the  proof  that 
the  world  needed  of  the  supremacy  of  the  spiritual  over 
the  physical.  '  I  am  the  Resurrection  and  the  Life,' 
He  says,  and  in  the  case  of  every  Christ-filled  individual, 
the  Resurrection  is  taking  place  now.  The  spiritual  body 
is  being  prepared  and  provided  now,  and  death  is  only  an 
incident,  no  more  the  end  of  life  than  the  moment  of  birth 
was  the  beginning  of  it.  The  Spirit  of  God  working  in 
those  who  are  related  to  Him  shall '  quicken  their  mortal 
bodies  '  2  so  that  at  death  the  corruptible  is,  so  to  speak, 
sloughed  off.  There  is  no  break  in  the  continuity  on 
the  spiritual  side,  and  Paul  most  distinctly  states  that 
the  body  laid  in  the  grave  is  not  that  which  shall  be.3 
To  be  '  united  with  Christ '  then  represents  a  spiritually 
and  morally  tempered  condition  of  prepotency,  whose 

*  Acts  2  24,  2  Rom.  8  ".  3  i  Cor.  15  3'. 


THE  BIBLE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY    301 

survival  of  death  is  natural.  It  represents  a  moral 
attainment  that  was  likewise  open  to  those  who  in  spirit 
saw  the  day  of  the  Lord  Christ  afar  off  and  were  glad. 
For  the  love  of  the  Eternal  to  man  is  essentially  eternal, 
and  the  possibility  of  the  religious  relationship  began 
when  man's  mind  was  able  even  dimly  to  comprehend 
the  existence  of  God.  The  '  power  of  an  indissoluble 
life  '  l  has  been  at  man's  disposal  from  the  beginning, 
and  this  also  is  of  grace. 

Finally,  it  may  well  be  asked  whether  in  an  age  whose 
conceptions  of  Hell  and  of  '  a  certain  fearful  looking  for 
of  judgment,'  2  can  never  be  exactly  those  of  our  fathers, 
there  is  not  just  that  element  of  appeal  applicable  to  the 
thought  of  to-day  in  the  aspects  of  Scriptural  teaching 
emphasised  in  the  preceding  pages.  For  if  this  world  in 
which  we  find  ourselves  is  ultimately  a  spiritual  process, 
shot  through  with  purpose  and  possibility  for  man  who 
is  its  fairest  fruitage,  does  he  not  miss  the  whole  meaning 
of  life  in  so  far  as  he  does  not  definitely  set  his  will  and 
energy  in  line  with  the  Eternal  Purpose  ?  Does  he  not, 
if  living  a  mere  selfish  existence,  with  no  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility to  himself  or  his  fellows,  in  that  measure  lose 
that  relationship  with  God  which  is  the  sole  condition  of 
spiritual  existence  ?  If  a  man  can  make  his  soul,  may 
he  not  also  unmake  it  ?  And  if  into  that  process  came 
One  who  supremely  revealed  to  men  the  heart  of  God 
and  so  the  purpose  of  life,  and  gives  men  power  to  '  walk 
in  newness  of  life,'  3  '  how  shall  we  escape  if  we  neglect 
so  great  salvation  ?  ' 4  It  may  be  that  we  do  not  escape — 
that  it  is  the  end,  for  that  we  have  destroyed  ourselves.6 

1  Heb.  7  16.  »  Heb.  10  "  »  Rom.  6  «.  «  Heb.  2  ». 

6  Such  a  possibility  indeed  is  literally  suggested  in  the  words  of  our 

Lord  ;  cf.  Luke  9  «  (favr 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE   HISTORIC   JESUS   AND   THE   COSMIC   CHRIST 

AT  this  stage  our  study  of  Individuality,  its  import,  and 
attainment  might  have  ceased,  were  it  not  that  into  the 
field  of  human  history  has  come,  as  we  have  seen,  One  in 
whom  the  perfect  life  was  manifested  while  on  earth, 
and  about  whom  it  was  even  said  that  '  He  brought  life 
and  immortality  to  light.' 1  In  some  way  or  other  all 
thought  upon  ultimate  problems,  in  so  far  as  it  makes 
any  claim  to  completeness,  inevitably  leads  back  to  the 
question,  What  think  ye  of  Christ  ?  for  He  stands  forth 
as  the  most  momentous  fact  in  the  whole  world  process, 
and  in  the  realms  alike  of  fact  and  of  thought  that  process 
reveals  itself  increasingly  as  a  unity.  It  is  evident,  how- 
ever, from  what  is  involved  in  the  nature  of  personality, 
that  the  judgment  in  answer  to  that  question  may  differ 
according  as  the  individual  offering  it  gives  it  with  a 
part  of  his  being  or  with  the  whole.  The  answer  may  be 
mainly  an  intellectual  judgment — '  a  judgment  of  the 
head,'  so  to  speak,  or  it  may  be  an  active  determining 
judgment  of  the  whole  man,  including  '  a  judgment  of 
the  heart,'  to  designate  it  by  the  dominating  aspect. 
Thus  of  Napoleon  it  is  related  2  how  one  day  in  St.  Helena 
he  turned  to  General  Bertrand  and  said,  '  Bertrand,  I 
know  men  ;  and  I  tell  you  that  Jesus  Christ  is  no  mere 
man.  .  .  .  Between  him  and  every  other  person  in  the 
world  there  is  no  possible  term  of  comparison.  .  .  .  Alex- 
ander, Caesar,  Charlemagne,  and  myself  founded  empires. 

1  2  Tim.  i  10. 

2  Robert-Antoine    de    Beauterne,    Sentiments   de    Napoleon    sur   le 
Christianisme  (1840). 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    303 

But  on  what  did  we  rest  the  creations  of  our  genius  ? 
Upon  force.  Jesus  Christ  alone  founded  His  empire 
upon  love  ;  and,  at  this  hour,  millions  of  men  would  die 
for  him.'  l  It  is  a  great  pronouncement,  and  yet,  as  a 
'judgment  of  the  head/  is  infinitely  removed  from  the 
'  judgment  of  the  heart '  set  forth  in  such  a  saying  as  that 
of  St.  Thomas — '  My  Lord  and  my  God.'  2  We  cannot 
get  away  from  the  fact  that  in  judging  Jesus  Christ — 
just  as,  in  a  lesser  way,  in  offering  criticism  of  any  artistic 
masterpiece — it  is  himself  that  a  man  judges,3  and  every 
one  who  essays  a  determination  of  that  unique  figure 
inevitably  lays  himself  open  to  the  haunting  Samaritan 
reflection,  '  Sir,  thou  hast  nothing  to  draw  with,  and  the 
well  is  deep.' 4 

To  many  the  mere  raising  of  ultimate  issues  implies  a 
predetermined  '  judgment  of  the  head,'  which  is  sometimes 
feared,  sometimes  resented.  Of  the  work  of  scholars 
digging  amidst  the  records  of  past  ages,  and  critically 
reconstructing  modern  ideas  of  Scripture,  many  have 
said  in  sorrow  and  in  anger,  '  They  have  taken  away  my 
Lord,  and  I  know  not  where  they  have  laid  Him.'  •  If 
that  is  really  true  for  them,  it  may  be  good  that  they 
should  thus  be  compelled  to  start  afresh  on  the  quest  of 
the  living  Christ.  Others,  for  whom  a  certain  personal 
experience  is  not  less  the  most  direct  and  impressive 
thing  for  them  with  regard  to  Jesus  Christ,  sometimes 

1  The  narrative  concludes  :    '  The  Emperor  became  silent,  and,  as 
General  Bertrand  remained  equaUy  still,  he  resumed  :    "If  you  do 
not  understand  that  Jesus  Christ  is  God,  well — I  was  wrong  in  making 
you  a  general."  '     It  is  only  right  to  say,  however,  that  the  famous 
monologue  from  which  the  above  extracts  are  taken  '  does  not  strike 
the  careful  student  of  Napoleon's  acts  and  sayings  as  representing  his 
inmost  thoughts  on  religion.'     Cf.  J.  Holland  Rose,  Napoleonic  Studies, 
pp.  102-110,  and,  per  contra,  Philip  Schaff,  The  Person  of  Christ,  pp. 
219-250,  288-289. 

2  John  20  *•. 

3  '  The  man  who,  more  than  any  other,  has  shaped  learning  and  set 
the  paths  in  which  it  should  go  onward  for  twenty-four  centuries  was, 
to  those  who  knew  him,  "  the  vain  and  chattering  little  Aristotle."  ' 
(Prof.  N.  S.  Shaler,  The  Individual,  p.  173.) 

«  John  4  ».  8  John  20  ». 


304     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

let  that  experience  determine  their  unthinking  relation 
to  all  those  questions  which  often  are  decisive  for  those 
who  never  pass  beyond  a  '  judgment  of  the  head.'  That 
experience  when  interpreted  in  the  light  of  the  Gospel 
narratives  does  not  suffer  them  to  find  any  difficulty  in 
connection  with  circumstances  such  as  the  Virgin  Birth 
or  Resurrection.  They  are  credible  of  Jesus  Christ 
because  Scripturally  certified.  To  their  mind  the  greater 
marvel  would  be  if  it  could  be  shown  that  Jesus  Christ 
was  a  mere  man  :  the  virgin  life  seems  to  demand  the 
Virgin  Birth.  Yet  others  who  have  also  found  in  Him 
'  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation  '  realise  that  through 
the  revelations  of  science  and  the  teachings  of  philosophy, 
the  world  in  which  they  think  of  Him  as  operative  now 
must  be  regarded  very  differently  from  the  way  in  which 
it  was  thought  of  two  thousand  years  ago.  The  long, 
slow  history  of  man  himself  and  the  conditions  under 
which  he  has  attained  his  present  stage  of  evolution  are 
better  understood.  If  the  process  has  been  a  process 
towards  the  development  of  immortable  Individuality, 
then  this  achievement  of  the  highest  moral  individuality — 
the  perfect  life — in  Jesus  Christ  must  have  some  definite 
relation  to  the  process  as  a  whole.  They  recognise  that 
if  Evolution  is  postulated  as  the  divine  method  of  cosmic 
development,  a  final  criterion  of  its  claim  as  universal 
truth  will  be  found  in  its  relation  to  Jesus  Christ.  How 
may  they  think  of  Him  in  connection  with  the  world 
process  as  revealed  in  science  and  philosophy  ? 

The  fact  that  our  Christian  era  is  dated — and  incor- 
rectly dated l — from  the  supposed  year  of  the  birth  of  our 
Lord  has  inevitably  tended  to  concentrate  attention  on 
that  particular  point  of  time  as  the  moment  of  the  world's 
greatest  uplift,  and  also,  on  some  theological  construc- 
tions, as  the  climax  of  human  sinfulness.  One  im- 

1  '  The  data  appear  to  be  best  harmonised  by  attributing  the  census 
of  the  Nativity  to  B.C.  7  or  the  beginning  of  B.C.  6  '  (Hastings'  Dictionary 
of  the  Bible,  vol.  i.  p.  405).  It  is  placed  even  earlier  on  some  theories, 
e.g.  B.C.  9-8  :  cf.  G.  H.  Box,  The  Virgin  Birth  of  Jesus,  p.  1 19.  In  the 
Encyclopaedia  Biblica,  vol.  i.  col.  809,  the  date  is  given  '  circa  B.C.  4  ?  '. 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    305 

mediate  result  is  that  even  the  fact  of  the  development 
of  our  Lord's  self-consciousness — in  short,  the  recognition 
that  He  lived  a  human  life — tends  straightway  to  be 
obscured.  An  opposite  tendency  is  illustrated  in  the  case 
of  those  who  would  attempt  to  find  a  basis  for  the  life 
and  work  of  Jesus  Christ  that  shall  be  wholly  outside  of, 
or  independent  of,  history.  This  endeavour  is  as  im- 
practicable as  that  essayed  by  those  who  would  destroy 
or  obliterate  the  history  that  we  have.  Historical  fixa- 
tion in  some  measure  is  necessary  because  we  are  dealing 
with  a  process,  and  with  a  progressive  process  :  but  com- 
plete success  in  this  direction  is  not  an  absolute  necessity 
for  a  view  of  things  under  which  it  is  believed  that  the 
same  Purposive  Energy  is  at  work  to-day  as  in  the  past. 

The  task  of  history  is  to  attempt  to  explain  as  far  as 
possible  how  under,  and  indeed  in  spite  of,  the  universality 
of  law,  that  which  is  unique  arises.  Scientific  explana- 
tion, in  terms  of  natural  law,  often  seems  to  make  it  more 
difficult  to  realise  how  the  special  and  unique  can  arise. 
Yet  in  an  evolutionary  process,  once  it  is  proved  to  be  a 
progressive  process,  there  is  more  reason  to  consider 
everything  unique  :  there  is  no  duplication,  no  repetition. 
But  in  any  case  universal  laws,  which  are  statistically 
based,  can  never  explain  or,  in  the  realm  of  the  organic, 
enable  us  to  predict  completely  with  reference  to  the 
particular  or  individual  case.  The  tasks  of  the  man  of 
science  and  of  the  historian  are  different.  The  former 
is  in  search  of  the  universal  causality  in  what  has  hap- 
pened :  the  latter  endeavours  to  trace  the  particular 
causality  of  the  individual  happening. 

Dependent  merely  on  his  power  of  criticism  of  sources 
to  which  it  is  quite  possible  that  additions  may  be  made 
at  any  time  which  might  compel  revision  of  previous 
estimates,  the  historian  readily  realises  the  relative  and 
approximate  character  of  even  the  soundest  of  his  con- 
clusions. He  progressively  attains  various  degrees  of 
probability,  but  rarely  does  he  reach  certainty.  There 
is  usually  a  residuum  of  uncertainty  which  can  never  be 
u 


306     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

completely  dispelled.  He  does  not  and  cannot  know 
every  detail,  and  in  that  measure  his  account  is  incom- 
plete. To  this  hour  certain  important  details  about  the 
battle  of  Waterloo  have  not  been  satisfactorily  cleared 
up.  No  tenable  theory  of  inspiration  can  prevent  these 
considerations  applying  with  equal  force  to  the  Gospel 
narratives.  Here  also  the  historian  must  apply  his 
critical  canons  of  analogy  and  correlation.  But  if  in 
the  course  of  investigation  it  is  found  that  these  resources 
fail,  it  is  simply  an  error  of  judgment  immediately  to  rule 
out  as  unhistorical  that  which  thus  stands  out  unique 
and  apparently  unrelated.  It  is  gratuitous  to  assume 
that  the  limits  of  a  self-imposed  method  are  necessarily 
the  limits  of  Reality.  That  an  incident  lacks  confirma- 
tion or  is  without  analogy  does  not  necessarily  disprove 
its  actuality.  '  Historical  standards  are  not  constitutive 
of  Reality  ;  they  merely  regulate  authentication.'  l 

Further,  into  history  there  enters  in  the  case  of  person- 
ality something  which  ultimately,  at  any  rate  as  yet,  is 
only  partially  explicable  in  scientific  categories  alone, 
something  which  is  no  finished  product,  and  so  the  great 
spiritual  turning-points  in  history  associated  with  it  are 
at  bottom  scientifically  inexplicable  in  a  complete  degree 
in  themselves.  If  the  view  propounded  in  these  pages  of 
the  Evolutionary  process  as  a  purposive  development  of 
individual  personalities  is  correct,  and  if  their  dependence 
on  the  Environment  be  a  more  vital  factor  at  any  moment 
than  their  Heredity,  no  man  can  profess  to  attempt  to 
set  down  what  range  of  spiritual  commerce  with  the 
Ultimate  Environment — what  degree  of  communion  with 
God  and  its  consequent  results — is  possible.  The  man 
who  knows  nothing  of  this  experience  is  handicapped  in 
any  endeavour  to  interpret  a  life  in  which  spiritual  com- 
munion has  been  the  distinctive  feature,  and  even  if  he 
is  aware  of  what  is  implied  in  it,  he  knows  just  in  that 
degree  that  it  is  something  of  which  no  complete,  strictly 
scientific  explanation  can  be  given.  The  relations  dis- 

1  A.  W.  Hunzinger,  Das  Wunder,  p.  136. 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    307 

cerned  in  history  between  a  personality  or  the  uprisings 
of  spiritual  life  and  the  general  immediate  Environment, 
provide  the  means  of  ascertaining  the  conditions  under 
which  the  appearance  of  such  spiritual  factors  is  rendered 
possible,  i.e.  intelligible  :  they  do  not  constitute  a  strictly 
causal  derivation.1  Such  conditions  can  never  amount 
to  a  pure  causal  explanation  :  they  do  not  directly 
represent  that  Supreme  Energy  which  at  critical  stages 
in  the  world  process  has  produced  the  striking  changes — 
the  big  lifts — that  we  recognise  there.  In  personality, 
indeed,  we  recognise  the  depths  of  spiritual  life,  and  the 
thought  of  the  divine  immanence  is  readily  suggested  to 
us.  But  the  compulsion  of  the  divine  power  we  feel 
only  in  the  presence  of  experiences  which  seize  us  with 
immediate  force  as  the  revelation  of  the  actuality  and 
activity  of  God.  This  occurs  supremely  and  uniquely 
in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ.  In  His  case  the  ordinary 
canons  of  analogy  and  correlation  fail.  There  is  some- 
thing here  that  has  never  been  known  before,  something 
about  which  we  can  say — just  because  we  understand  the 
world  process  so  much  better — that  it  will  never,  in  that 
particular  form,  be  known  again. 

The  uniqueness  of  the  person  and  work  of  Jesus  Christ 
cannot  be  explained  away  along  historico-critical  lines. 
This  does  not  mean  that  there  is  actual  unassailable 
proof  of  every  recorded  fact  concerning  Him,  but  it  does 
mean  that  critically  He  cannot  be  put  away  out  of  reality. 
History  takes  care  for  itself  that  when  criticism  oversteps 
its  limits  it  shall  always  be  brought  back  within  its  justi- 
fiable limits  :  in  other  words,  truth  is  invincible.  His- 
torical criticism  may  do  much  by  way  of  explaining 
historically  the  local  form  and  time  of  the  appearance 
of  Jesus,  but  these  will  never  supply  in  themselves  a 
sufficient  ground  for  His  actual  appearance  and  active 
significance.  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  once  wrote  :  '  Apologists 
labour  to  point  out  how  precisely  Christianity  was  adapted 
to  the  various  wants  of  the  time.  The  obvious  inference 

1  A.  W.  Hunzinger,  Das  Wunder,  p.  138. 


308     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

is  that  Christianity  was  developed  by  the  instincts  of  the 
people  who  felt  those  wants.' l  If  this  contention  is 
right,  it  is  very  strange  that  the  most  discerning  of  the 
people,  in  response  to  the  needs  of  whose  instincts  Christi- 
anity was  developed,  in  the  end  '  all  forsook  Him  and 
fled.'  2  Is  it  probable  that  even  the  twentieth  century 
could  in  this  sort  of  a  way  produce  the  Christ  ?  Incon- 
ceivably No  :  still  less  could  the  Palestinian  environment 
of  two  thousand  years  ago  in  itself  have  done  so.  Further, 
historical  criticism  must  also  recognise  the  insufficiency 
and  incompleteness  of  its  canons,  and  admit,  if  it  is  true 
to  itself,  much  as  mysterious  and  problematic  which 
faith,  however,  will  recognise  as  God,  the  living  worker, 
the  Redeemer,  meeting  it  in  the  actuality  of  things. 
History  can  establish  the  spatial,  temporal,  and  psycho- 
logical relations,  conditions,  and  occasions  under  which 
the  Divine  Energy  expresses  itself  in  history,  but  it  cannot 
explain  the  increments  or  even  the  convergences  out  of 
which  spring  the  great  lifts  in  history  :  it  cannot  integrate 
what  it  collects  together.  This  transcends  the  empirical 
'  hang  '  of  things,  although  expressing  itself  in  and  through 
time  and  space,  and  notably  in  the  human  consciousness. 
But  the  point  at  which  the  highest  values  and  realities 
come  to  light,  incontestably  clear  to  faith,  and  recognised 
in  some  measure  by  all,  is  the  Person  of  Jesus  Christ. 

The  whole  question  is  best  approached  by  considering 
in  the  first  instance  what  our  Lord  said  about  Himself. 
In  the  case  of  any  great  achievement  it  is  probable  that 
he  can  give  the  most  accurate  account  who  has  achieved. 
In  Jesus  Christ,  whatever  else  we  may  say,  we  have  a 
unique  moral  achievement,  and  on  this  ground  we  have 
confidence  in  adopting  prior  to  any  other,  and  as  one  by 
which  to  test  all  others,  our  Lord's  own  explanation  of 
Himself. 

Concerning  his  relation  to  God,  our  Lord  is  most  ex- 

1  An  Agnostic's  Apology  and  other  Essays,  p.  299. 

2  Mark  14  -'». 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    309 

plicit.1  '  The  Father,'  He  says,  '  is  greater  than  I.'  2 
'  One  there  is  who  is  good.'  3  '  My  meat  is  to  do  the  will 
of  Him  that  sent  me,  and  to  accomplish  His  work.'  4 
'  My  teaching  is  not  mine,  but  His  that  sent  me.'  6  '  I 
can  of  mine  own  self  do  nothing.'  6  And  so  on  through 
many  passages,7  in  which  He  freely  and  fully  declares 
His  dependence  on  God  and  His  subordination  to  Him. 
We  recollect  His  audible  appeals  to  the  Father  previous 
to  His  exercise  of  that  power  which,  as  man,  He  felt 
was  derived,  e.g.  at  the  raising  of  Lazarus.  Nor  is  this 
attitude  contradicted  by  such  a  statement  as,  '  I  and  the 
Father  are  one.' 8  Although  the  analogy  fails  beyond 
a  certain  narrow  range,  we  can  imagine  a  pool  testifying 
to  the  oneness  of  its  relation  with  a  river  which  is,  how- 
ever, at  the  same  time  '  greater '  than  it.  In  the  same 
sense  St.  Paul  keeps  a  clear  distinction  between  '  God  our 
Father  and  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,' 9  referring  again  and 
again  to  '  the  God  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  Father 
of  Glory.'  10  Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  all  that  evidenced 
this  subordination  to  the  Father — for  He  Himself  de- 
clared that  He  was  neither  omniscient u  nor  omnipotent,12 
— He  revealed  the  Father  to  men  :  He  was  the  thought, 
the  heart,  the  self  of  God,  made  audible  and  visible  to 
men. 

Yet  He  was  conscious  from  the  beginning  of  a  unique 

1  In  the  following  paragraphs  no  attempt  will  be  made  to  differ- 
entiate in  value  between  the  Synoptics  and  the  Fourth  Gospel.  They 
are  one  and  all  records  and  impressions,  it  may  be  of  different  value, 
but  it  does  not  follow,  as  is  too  often  assumed,  that  the  more  exact 
recorder  or  the  one  nearest  to  the  facts  is  necessarily  the  better  inter- 
preter, or  best  endowed  with  the  power  to  comprehend  most  fully  the 
significance  of  the  phenomena  which  he  records.  At  the  same  time  it 
must  be  recognised  that  the  Fourth  Gospel  is  more  akin  to  St.  Paul's 
writings  than  the  Synoptics  so  far  as  Christology  is  concerned,  in  that 
it  is  largely  interpretation,  rather  than  record. 

John  14  «.  3  Matt.  19  ".  «  John  4  »«. 

John  7  ".  •  John  5  30. 

Cf.  further  Matt.  26";    John  5 '•  ;   6s";    12  "  ;    14".  «;    18  "  ; 
20". 

John  10  80.  •  Ephes.  i  '. 

Ephes.  i  "  ;   cf.  also  Col.  i  ••  »  ;   3  "  ;   and  i  Cor.  8  •. 
»  Mark  13  ".  »»  John  5  '•  ;  Matt.  20  M. 


310     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

relationship  to  God.  This  developed  into  a  peculiar 
self-consciousness  of  Himself  as  the  Messiah,  the  Christ, 
with  which  there  came  into  ever  clearer  association  that 
supreme  sense  of  a  divine  and  eternal  mission  to  man- 
kind. As  men  come  to  understand  God  as  He  reveals 
Himself  in  nature  and  in  history,  they  understand  Jesus 
Christ  better,  and  He  in  turn  reveals  God  to  men.  Know- 
ledge of  the  one  interprets  the  other.  '  All  things  have 
been  delivered  unto  me  of  my  Father ;  and  no  one  knoweth 
the  Son,  save  the  Father ;  neither  doth  any  one  know 
the  Father  save  the  Son,  and  he  to  whomsoever  the  Son 
willeth  to  reveal  Him.' 1  '  He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen 
the  Father.'  2  The  history  of  experience  shows  this  to 
be  the  case.  '  Is  not  this  the  carpenter  ?  '  was  a  common 
reflection  from  minds  that  recognised  in  Him  nothing 
more  than  a  mere  man.  '  Thou  art  the  Christ,  the  Son 
of  the  living  God,'  avowed  a  deeper  understanding. 
'  For  me  to  live  is  Christ,'  was  the  expression  of  a  heart 
that  found  in  Him  the  '  very  essence  of  the  Unseen  and 
the  living  influence  of  the  Eternal.'  3  And  so  throughout 
the  ages  it  has  been.  A  progressive  deepening  of  in- 
sight into  the  Person  and  work  of  Christ  follows  upon 
growing  realisation  of  the  work  of  God  in  the  world,  in 
ourselves,  and  in  our  fellowmen,  and  will  continue  to 
follow.  There  is  no  change  in  Christ :  the  difference  is 
in  the  beholder.4  Our  age  sees  the  divinity  of  Christ 
primarily  in  His  moral  and  spiritual  influence  upon  human 
history,  rather  than  in  the  recorded  miracles  that  helped 
the  incipient  faith  of  an  earlier  period.  '  Even  though 

1  Matt,  ii  «.  2  John  14  ». 

3  Dr.  Marshall  Tailing,  The  Science  of  Spiritual  Life,  p.  101. 

4  This   progressive   deepening   of   faith  is   strikingly  illustrated   in 
the  serial  confessions  of  '  the  man  born  blind  '  (John  9)  :   thus  : 

v.  ii.  The  man  that  is  called  Jesus  made  clay  and  anointed  mine 

eyes. 
v.  17.  They  say  therefore  unto  the  blind  man  again,  What  sayest 

thpu   of   Him,  in  that   He  opened  thine  eyes  ?     And  he 

said,  He  is  a  prophet, 
v.  35.  Jesus  said,  Dost  thou  believe  on  the  Son  of  God  ?     And  he 

said,  Lord,  I  believe.     And  he  worshipped  Him. 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    311 

we  have  known  Christ  after  the  flesh,  yet  now  we  know 
Him  so  no  more/  said  Paul.1  That  which  convinced 
him  was  not  records,  but  an  experience  in  which  Christ 
came  to  him.  It  is  the  ultimate  test  to-day. 

But  our  present  interest  is  in  the  attempt  to  relate  the 
evolutionary  conception  of  the  world  process  to  Jesus 
Christ.  That  process  has  shown  itself  interpretable  as  a 
continuous  progressive,  purposive  manifestation  of  God, 
of  which  at  a  certain  stage  man  is  the  crown,  yet  man 
struggling,  largely  failing,  misusing  his  hardly  and  slowly 
won  freedom.  From  the  side  of  the  Divine  purpose  one 
more  stage  was  necessary  to  complete  the  process  of 
revelation  and  enablement,  when  the  human  mind  was 
partially  ready  to  understand  it.  If  then  that  ultimate 
view  of  God's  relation  to  the  world  and  to  man,  from 
which  we  started,  is  supportable  ;  if,  that  is  to  say,  we 
are  right  in  thinking  of  the  Divine  Mind  or  Spirit,  which 
is  also  Love,  in  virtue  of  its  very  essence  realising  itself 
in  the  gradual  creation,  through  process,  of  organisms  of 
ever-increasing  complexity  suitable  for  the  reception  of 
its  ever-increasing  influx,  which  should  issue  in  free 
spiritual  beings  capable  of  coming  into  union  and  fellow- 
ship with  it ;  if  God  has  indeed  been  becoming  man 
throughout  the  ages  ;  then  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  this  purpose  would  be  made  clear  to  man  when  he 
had  reached  the  stage  at  which  he  was  able  to  begin  to 
understand  and  appreciate  all  that  was  implied  in  it. 
Doubtless  in  the  previous  aeons  multitudes  of  men  had 
lived  and  died,  partially  understanding,  some  more 
clearly  than  others,  what  was  the  purpose  of  God's  gift 
of  human  life,  and  it  was  counted  unto  them  for  righteous- 
ness.2 '  But  when  the  fulness  of  the  time  came,  God 
sent  forth  His  Son,  born  of  a  woman.' 8  His  coming 

1  2  Cor.  5  »•. 

1  See  Acts  10  *«•  »»,  where  St.  Peter  definitely  states  this  point  of 
view. 
»  Gal.  4 «  (R.V.). 


312     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

was  no  more,  but  also  no  less,  '  a  special  intervention  ' 
than  the  appearance  of  life,  or  self -consciousness,  or  any 
of  the  other  big  lifts  in  the  cosmic  process.  If  this  pro- 
gressive view  of  the  evolutionary  process  is  true,  there 
simply  had  to  be  a  fulness  of  the  times,  and  while  the 
fact  of  the  world's  sin  can  afford  no  special  reason  for  the 
appearance  of  our  Lord  at  one  time  rather  than  another, 
the  stage  of  man's  evolution,  in  relation  to  God's  ultimate 
purpose  for  him,  does.  That  is  to  say,  the  Incarnation 
is  to  be  thought  of  as  a  great  primary  fact  in  itself,  which 
would  have  taken  place  in  any  case  quite  apart  from  any 
particular  thought  of  man's  sin. 

For  if  the  original  purpose  of  God  is  complete  self- 
communication  to  a  being  who  can  come  into  fellowship 
with  Him,  that  purpose  cannot  be  set  aside  by  anything 
that  man  can  do.  Such  a  glorious  manifestation  of  His 
love  as  that  which  is  seen  in  the  Incarnation  cannot  be 
dependent  on  man's  sin  :  in  that  case  it  makes  man's 
sin  necessary  to  it.  It  means  that  man  merited  less  of 
God  before  '  the  Fall '  than  after  it.  In  terms  of  some 
philosophies  sin  is  a  natural  and  necessary  factor  in  the 
development  of  man's  spiritual  nature.  On  such  a  view 
it  would  be  difficult  to  see  when  it  would  cease  to  be 
necessary.  On  the  contrary,  sin  is  the  deliberate  refusal 
to  accept  the  purpose  of  God  in  human  life.  It  is  at  once 
treason  to  the  world  process  as  a  whole  and  ingratitude 
to  God  :  accordingly  with  the  progress  of  knowledge 
sin  deepens  in  character.  But  it  has  never  changed  the 
purpose  of  God  :  it  only  turns  revelation  into  redemption. 
The  source  of  the  Incarnation  is  in  the  heart  of  God  : 
baffled  in  one  way,  it  finds  expression  in  another.  But 
His  purpose  has  been  the  same  from  the  beginning, 
although  His  methods  of  dealing  with  mankind  may 
change.  The  Incarnation,  then,  is  not  dependent  on 
'  the  Fall/  for  that  would  make  it  an  afterthought.  To 
think  of  it  in  the  character  of  an  emergency  policy 
rather  than  as  the  natural  development  of  the  Divine 
purpose  is  to  obscure  its  central  and  climactic  place  in 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    313 

human  history.  Redemption  springs  from  it,  not  it 
from  redemption.  The  original  idea  of  the  Incarna- 
tion lies  in  the  prophetic  words — '  they  shall  call  his 
name  Immanuel ;  which  is,  being  interpreted,  God  with 
us '  : 1  it  is  only  later  that  the  development  comes — 
'  thou  shalt  call  his  name  Jesus  ;  for  it  is  He  that  shall 
save  His  people  from  their  sins.'  a  That  which  is  true 
historically  of  the  race  is  also  true  individually.  The 
Incarnation  is  not  merely  the  assurance  that  the  pitying 
God  is  with  mankind  in  the  long,  upward  struggle,  but 
it  is  the  revelation  of  His  very  heart,  showing  Him  as 
Love,  seeking  men,  able  to  save,  waiting  to  forgive.  Or, 
in  the  language  of  philosophy,  the  ultimate  purpose 
and  plan  belong  to  the  wider  Reality,  not  to  us  ;  it 
seeks  us. 

Creation  is  the  primary  Kenosis  (self-emptying  or  self- 
limitation)  of  which  the  Incarnation  is  the  central  and 
most  significant  fact — central,  because  Jesus  Christ  made 
real  that  for  which  the  whole  process  came  into  being. 
It  is  the  insistence  of  Scripture  that  the  redeeming  Gbd 
is  the  creating  God,8 — '  in  bringing  many  sons  to  glory 
it  was  befitting  that  He  for  whom  and  by  whom  the 
universe  exists  should  perfect  the  Pioneer  of  their  salva- 
tion by  suffering.' 4  The  religious  life,  that  is  to  say — 
redemption — is  not  something  apart  from  the  rest  of 
Nature  and  things.  The  process  of  Nature  from  the 
side  of  the  Divine  intention  has  been  throughout — in 
inception  and  general  conduct  alike — a  process  of  grace, 
and  it  is  fulfilled  in  grace.  For,  broadly  conceived,  it 
has  been  a  process  of  progress  with  possibilities  opening 
out  at  every  stage  as  the  result  of  growing  freedom,  with 
constant  support  from  the  Environment  in  the  main- 
tenance of  whatever  advance  was  secured.  It  is  not 
remarkable  that  in  the  degree  in  which  men  in  the  past 
entered  into  appreciation  of  the  meaning  and  purpose  of 

1  Matt,  i  •*.  •  Matt.  I  «. 

*  Prof.  J.  Moffatt,  The  Approach  to  the  New  Testament,  p.  32. 

«  Heb.  2  »•  (Moffatt's  trans.).     Cf.  also  Ps.  124  • ;   Matt,  n  to. 


314     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

life,  they  felt  sure  that  that  meaning  and  purpose  would 
be  still  more  clearly  revealed. 

In  the  perfect  manhood  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  creative 
spirit  of  God  which  throughout  the  ages  had  been  be- 
coming man  came  to  full  and  complete  expression  as  a 
revealing,  energising  and  saving  power.  Without  the 
Incarnation  the  process  of  human  evolution  had  been 
checked  and  hindered,  just  as  if,  at  earlier  stages,  any  of 
the  other  environmental  elements,  such  as  light  or  oxygen, 
had  failed  to  be  developed  when  they  were  required. 
In  some  such  manner  as  the  Carboniferous  forests  ap- 
peared and  purified  the  dank,  dense,  carbon-dioxide  laden 
atmosphere  of  the  Devonian  era,  so  that  a  new  impulse  was 
given  to  organic  evolution,  came  Jesus  Christ  and  purified 
the  spiritual  atmosphere,  and  man  advanced  in  inter- 
course and  fellowship  with  God.  His  life  of  love  and 
sacrificial  service  created  a  new  moral  atmosphere.  Or, 
as  we  can  think  of  the  origin  of  the  human  race  as  a 
marked  discontinuous  variation  or  mutation,  a  point 
emphasised  by  some  notable  impulse  of  the  Divine  energy 
raising  life  in  such  a  way  that,  henceforth  it  had  the 
possibility  of  moving  thereafter  upon  a  higher  plane,  so 
may  we  perhaps  in  all  reverence  think  of  the  historic 
appearance  of  Jesus  Christ.  In  relation  to  man,  the 
appearance  of  Jesus  Christ  is,  then,  an  integral  part  of 
the  evolutionary  process  in  the  purpose  of  the  unmasking 
Environment  which  in  its  ultimate  spiritual  aspect  is 
God.1  He  was  perfectly  adapted  to  it  from  the  beginning. 
In  Him  Environment  and  process  meet — reveal  themselves 
as  one.  In  Jesus  Christ  all  of  purpose  and  perfection 
that  was  implicit  and  struggling  to  expression,  becomes 
once  for  all  explicit.  Thus  the  Other-regarding  factor  in 
Evolution,  to  the  history  of  whose  gradual  emergence, 
all  unconscious  at  first,  reference  has  been  made,2  received 
its  supreme  expression  in  Him.  In  this  way,  as  a  matter 
of  simple  historical  truth,  Jesus  Christ  is  the  central 

1  The  Spiritual  Interpretation  of  Nature,  chap.  10. 

2  Cf.  p.  254. 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    315 

pivotal  fact  of  the  world's  history.1  In  Jesus  Christ 
God  visibly  identifies  Himself  with  the  whole  world 
process  in  which  suffering  is  seen  te  be  service  and 
vicarious  suffering  its  highest  expression.2  To  the  man, 
then,  who  says,  '  We  know  enough  of  the  process  to  say 
that  He  can  never  be  included,'  the  reply  may  be  made 
that  when  we  know  the  process  better,  we  may  perhaps 
see  that  He  is  included,  not  in  the  sense  of  being  a  product 
of  the  process — in  which  case  His  appearance  would 
reasonably  have  been  expected  as  its  last  term,  which  is 
precisely  what  did  not  take  place — but  in  being  an  ex- 
pression, the  supreme  Revelation,  definitely  ordained 
and  in  the  fulness  of  the  times  appearing,  of  that  Power 
which  is  at  work  in  the  whole  process.  And  further, 
if  we  believe,  as  we  may,  with  Professor  B.  Moore,  that 
'  it  was  no  fortuitous  combination  of  chances  and  no 
cosmic  dust  which  brought  life  to  the  bosom  of  our 
ancient  mother  earth  in  the  far  distant  pre-Cambrian 
ages,  but  a  well-regulated  order  of  development,  which 
comes  to  every  mother  earth  in  the  universe  in  the 
maturity  of  its  creation,  when  the  conditions  arrive 
within  the  suitable  limits,'  3  it  is  not  impossible  that 
other  worlds  may  know  their  Bethlehem,  and  their  Calvary 
too.  In  a  very  real  sense,  the  historic  Jesus  is  for  us  the 
cosmic  Christ. 

It  may,  however,  well  be  questioned  why  this  revelation 
should  be  made,  and  this  development  reached,  in  course 
of  the  process,  and  not  rather  at  its  end.  Now,  close 
investigation  of  the  world  conditions  at  the  time  of  the 
advent  of  our  Lord  shows  that  whilst  commerce  was 
flourishing,  and  the  rich  culture  of  the  Hellenic  East  had 
penetrated  throughout  the  Latin  West,  something  was 
lacking.  '  The  old  gods  are  dethroned.  .  .  .  The  world 
is  empty,  because  heaven  is  empty  first.'  *  Not  that 

1  Cf.  antea,  p.  260. 

1  The  Spiritual  Interpretation  of  Nature,  pp.  165-168. 

1  Biochemistry,  p.  34. 

«  Prof.  Rudolf  Sohm,  Outlines  of  Church  History,  pp.  2  and  3. 


316     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

there  was  any  lack  of  religions,  but  they  had  no  power 
to  elevate  or  recreate  human  life.  The  moral  progress 
of  man  had  reached  a  stage  at  which  it  was  wellnigh 
spent,  and  there  was  serious  danger  of  collapse  if  not  of 
actual  general  retrogression.  The  moral  life  of  man  had 
not  consolidated,  and  gave  no  promise  of  further  develop- 
ment :  it  seemed  exhausted  and  unable  to  bear  the  strain 
of  continued  advancement.  Mankind  in  many  of  its 
representatives  had  reached  a  high  stage  of  mental 
evolution,  but  its  moral  evolution  had  reached  a  point 
when  definite  personal  intercourse  with  some  personality 
loftier  than  any  of  the  sons  of  men  was  needed  to  still 
further  develop  the  potentialities  in  man.  Just  because 
he  was  becoming  aware  of  himself  as  incipient  personality, 
it  was  through  such  a  medium  that  God  would  most 
naturally  lead  men  on  into  fuller  understanding  of  life 
and  deeper  fellowship  with  Him,  and  through  a  Person 
achieve  that  which  the  methods  and  limitations  of  earlier 
ages  would  less  and  less  succeed  in  achieving.  But 
further,  as  Le  Conte  brought  out  long  ago,  with  the 
ability  to  work  out  his  own  salvation,  to  co-operate  in 
his  own  evolution,  the  human  individual  is  influenced 
by  ideals.  His  evolution  is  not  entirely  externally  deter- 
mined. '  In  organic  evolution  species  are  transformed 
by  the  environment.  In  human  evolution  character  is 
transformed  by  its  own  ideal.  .  .  .  Organic  evolution 
is  pushed  onward  and  upward  from  behind  and  below. 
Human  evolution  is  drawn  upward  and  forward  from 
above  and  in  front  by  the  attractive  force  of  ideals. 
Thus  the  ideal  of  organic  evolution  cannot  appear  until 
the  end ;  while  the  attractive  ideals  of  human  evolution 
must  come — whether  only  in  the  imagination  or  realised 
in  the  flesh — but  must  come  somehow  in  the  course. 
The  most  powerfully  attractive  ideal  ever  presented  to 
the  human  mind,  and,  therefore,  the  most  potent  agent 
in  the  evolution  of  human  character,  is  the  Christ.'  * 

1  Joseph  Le  Conte,  Evolution  and  its  Relation  to  Religious  Thought, 
P-  363- 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    317 

Accordingly,  in  regarding  the  Incarnation  as  the  central 
fact  of  the  world's  history,  we  must  think  of  its  primary 
purpose  as  one  of  revelation.  As  such  it  is  an  integral 
part  of  the  process,  necessary  for  the  further  spiritual 
evolution  of  mankind.  Through  it  that  became  manifest 
which  men  had  only  dimly  perceived  before,  viz.  that 
God  was  with  them  in  that  ceaseless  struggle  which  is  life, 
and  desired  to  enter  into  loving  fellowship  with  them,  that 
fellowship  which  means  Eternal  life.  In  Jesus  Christ 
men  may  see  the  perfect  life  which  is,  however,  also  a 
redeeming  and  recreative  force — the  direct  response  of 
God  to  the  questing  sense  of  man's  deepest  need,  an 
answer  in  terms  of  revelation  and  of  power.  And  all  this 
He  achieved  as  the  result  of  an  identification  of  Himself 
with  God  and  His  purposes,  so  complete  that  He  could 
feel  Himself  to  be  the  fulfilment  of  the  highest  intuitions 
and  yearnings  of  the  past.1  The  creation  process  has 
been  a  whole,  and  the  close  relation  that  St.  Paul  seeks 
to  establish  between  it  and  Jesus  Christ,  in  whom,  he 
says,  it  all  literally  '  stands  together,'  2  means  this  at 
least,  that  at  no  stage  has  it  been  a  chance  affair,  but 
that  from  the  beginning  it  had  as  end,  man  developing 
towards  sonship,  and  so  meant  Jesus  Christ — meant  in 
the  creative  Divine  Mind,  with  a  meaning  and  significance 
which  are  existence  itself.  As  St.  Peter  said,  He  'was 
foreknown  indeed  before  the  foundation  of  the  world, 
but  was  manifested  at  the  end  of  the  times  for  your  sake.' 8 

As  the  Revealer  Jesus  showed  to  men  in  time  and 
space  what  is  eternally  true  of  God,  focalising  within  the 
limitations  of  a  human  life  the  infinite  love  of  God  to 
man,  His  desire  to  share  with  them  all  the  experiences  of 
human  life,  and  how  He  suffers  because  of  sin  and  human 
suffering ;  by  His  death  Jesus  revealed  at  what  a  cost 
alone  can  sin  be  overcome,  and  what  forgiveness  means. 
His  was  a  life  of  perfect  Love — a  life  that  has  for  ever 
demonstrated  that  Love  at  any  rate  is  very  close  to  the 

1  Luke  10".  ";   Matt.  13". 

*  Col.  i  '• ;   cf.  also  2  Tiro,  i  •  ^  «  i  Pet.  i  *>. 


3i8     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

secret  of  the  Universe,  and  in  some  way  controls  the 
creative  energy  of  the  world.  Creative  and  recreative 
evolution  works  in  human  life  by  Love  ;  '  they  became,' 
said  Hosea,  '  like  that  which  they  loved.'  1  But  while 
the  death  of  Jesus  supremely  revealed  the  attitude  of 
God,  it  did  not  change  that  attitude,  which  has  always 
been  the  same.  '  Light  from  the  sun  at  night  is  stream- 
ing constantly  through  all  parts  of  space,  but  only  where 
a  moon  or  a  planet  comes  to  reflect  it  does  it  become  so 
that  we  can  see  and  know  it.'  2  The  death  of  Jesus  was 
the  climactic  act  of  a  life  of  revelation  and  redemption, 
but  we  may  find  ourselves  '  seeking  the  living  among  the 
dead  '  if  we  focus  too  much  into  an  event  '  what  ought  to 
be  perceived  as  a  permanent  and  spiritual  power,  ever 
operative,  and  everywhere  revealing  the  transforming  life 
of  God.'  3  Jesus  saves  men  by  His  life  as  by  His  death ; 
in  short,  the  Incarnation  as  a  whole  is  the  At-one-ment.4 
Jesus  Christ  further  proves  to  be  the  Reconciler,  making 
men  at  one  with  God  ;  '  He  is  the  Lamb  of  God  which  is 
taking  away  the  sin  of  the  world ' 5  as  men  become  recon- 
ciled to  God  in  Him  ;  He  unites  them  to  God  in  and 
through  Himself.  Organic  life  is  at-one-ment  with,  or 
adaptation  to,  the  more  proximate  aspects  of  the  En- 
vironment ;  Eternal  life  is  at-one-ment  with,  or  adapta- 
tion to,  the  ultimate  aspect  of  the  Environment,  which  is 
God.  In  either  case  it  is  a  matter  of  necessary  active 
relationship,  which  can  easily  be  destroyed.  That  life 
of  service  and  of  sacrifice  unto  death  which  showed  forth 
supremely  the  general  law  of  all  organic  progress  from  the 
dawn  of  life,  proves  itself  powerful,  by  ideal  and  in  actu- 
ality through  the  direct  transforming  work  of  the  Spirit 

Hos.  9  10. 

Dr.  D.  A.  Murray,  Christian  Faith  and  the  New  Psychology,  p.  328. 

Dr.  Marshall  Tailing,  The  Science  of  Spiritual  Life,  p.  185. 

2  Cor.  5  19. 

John  i  -9.  The  Greek  tense  is  a  present  participle.  The  scope  and 
purpose  of  this  work  do  not  admit  6f  an  examination  of  the  various 
theological  theories  of  Atonement,  even  were  the  writer  competent  to 
do  so.  It  is  important  to  notice  that  no  one  of  them  has  ever  received 
credal  sanction. 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    319 

of  Jesus  in  human  lives,  to  take  away  the  sin  of  the  world. 
Love  begets  love,  and  there  is  wrought  a  repentance  and 
surrender  in  human  lives  which  from  the  side  of  God  implies 
forgiveness.  Love  begets  love,  supplanting  selfish  desire 
as  the  dominating  impulse  in  character.  Man  attains  to 
immortality  only  as  he  loves,  since  it  is  love  alone  that  can 
produce  wholeness  and  perfection  of  being,  and  is  the  only 
enduring  relationship.  It  is  not,  then,  so  much  a  matter 
of  substitution  as  of  identification.  God  and  man  be- 
come reconciled,  united,  at  one,  in  Jesus  Christ,  in  an 
eternal  and  indissoluble  relationship.  And  not  merely 
does  He  reconcile  man  to  God,  but  also  man  to  man,  and 
even  nation  to  nation.  At  a  point  in  the  Uspallata  Pass, 
on  the  boundary  between  Chile  and  Argentina,  may  be 
seen  '  an  impressive  statue  .  .  .  representing  Christ  ex- 
tending the  blessings  of  peace  on  either  hand,' J  set  up  by 
the  Governments  of  these  two  countries  at  the  close  of 
the  delicate  frontier  negotiations  of  1902,  as  a  symbol  of 
lasting  reconciliation :  '  He  is  our  peace,'  runs  the  in- 
scription in  part,  'who  hath  made  both  one.' 2 

In  two  of  the  four  Gospels  the  story  of  the  appearance 
of  Jesus  Christ  in  human  history  is  placed  within  the 
setting  of  a  Virgin  Birth.3  Such  an  explanation  or  in- 
terpretation of  His  life  is  not  distinctive  of  these  Gospels, 
although  sound  and  far-reaching  differences  may  be 
established  between  the  Gospel  narratives  and  similar 
accounts  in  pagan  literature.  As  records,  the  narratives 
become  subject  to  textual  and  other  criticism,4  but  a 

1  Sir  Thomas  H.  Holdich,  Political  Frontiers  and  Boundary  Making, 
p.  150.  »  Eph.  2  ". 

3  To  try  and  render  the  doctrine  tenable  by  reference  to  the  pheno- 
menon of  parthenogenesis  in  the  animal  kingdom  is  both  to  misunder- 
stand the  role  of  the  phenomenon  in  nature  and  to  miss  the  meaning 
of  the  doctrine  in  question.     Between  the  biological  phenomenon  and 
the  Scriptural  narrative  there  is  nothing  in  common  save  the  name. 

4  Thus,  some  scholars  (e.g.  Harnack,  Schmiedel,  Weiss,  etc.)  have 
regarded  Luke  i.  34,  35,  as  an  interpolation — it  may  be  on  insufficient 
grounds.     On   the  other  hand,  such  a  psychological  situation  as  is 
depicted  in  Luke  2  M  is  not  easy  to  understand,  if  these  verses  are  not 
later  additions.     For  critical  examinations  of  the  whole  question,  cf. 


320     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

more  penetrating  question  is  whether  such  an  interpreta- 
tion is  necessary.  With  regard  to  the  former  line  of 
study,  it  may  be  noticed  that  while  the  First  Gospel 
recognises  the  Virgin  Birth,  yet  it  perhaps  also  gives  a 
clue  as  to  how  this  explanation  first  arose,  and  provides 
us  with  the  atmosphere  in  which  it  naturally  flourished. 
'  Now  all  this  is  come  to  pass,  that  it  might  be  fulfilled 
which  was  spoken  by  the  Lord  through  the  prophet,'  l 
and  then  a  reference  is  given  to  a  passage  in  Isaiah  which 
can  only  be  brought  by  a  circumlocution  into  relation 
with  the  event  which  it  was  held  to  anticipate.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  tremendous  influence  of  the 
Old  Testament  upon  the  thought  of  the  early  Christians, 
or  to  over-estimate  the  exquisite  sensitivity  of  their  minds 
to  the  meaningfulness  of  its  language.  They  ransacked 
the  sacred  writings  for  passages  which  might  be  supposed 
to  shed  light  on  the  career  of  the  Messiah.  In  this  way 
references  were  found  which  came  to  be  regarded  as 
fundamental,  not  merely  by  the  average  early  Christian, 
but  by  St.  Paul  himself.  Thus  it  would  appear  z  that 
his  doctrine  of  the  Lordship  of  Jesus  Christ  developed  in 
his  mind  upon  the  basis  of  the  first  verse  of  the  noth 
Psalm,  '  The  Lord  said  unto  my  Lord.'  This  supposedly 
authoritative  designation  of  the  Messiah  cleared  away 
mountains  of  obscurity  with  regard  to  the  Person  of  our 
Lord  from  the  mind  of  the  early  Church.  Similarly, 
Isaiah  vii.  14  seemed  to  supply  an  astounding  hint, 
although  the  word  rendered  '  virgin  '  4  really  means  a 
young  marriageable  woman,  with  no  special  stress  on 
virginity.  After  the  Resurrection,  when  our  Lord  was 
put  by  His  followers  on  the  same  level  with  God,  the  name 
of  the  child  '  Immanuel ' — God  with  us — came  as  a  re- 

G.  H.  Box,  The  Virgin  Birth  of  Jesus,  p.  35  ff. ;  Professor  J.  F.  Bethune- 
Baker,  The  Faith  of  the  Apostles'  Creed,  p.  66  ff.  ;  and  Vincent  Taylor, 
The  Historical  Evidence  for  the  Virgin  Birth. 

1  Matt,  i  M. 

2  On  the  authority  of  Prof.  H.  A.  A.  Kennedy. 

8  The  Hebrew  language  has  its  own  particular  word  for  '  virgin  ' — 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    321 

discovery  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  a  reinforcement  of 
their  own  decision.  But  in  particular  to  account  for  His 
sinlessness,  what  was  more  probable  than  that  this  beauti- 
ful story  should  spring  up,  and  that  religious  minds  should 
say  of  Mary, '  This  is  the  Virgin  of  whom  it  was  spoken  as 
in  Isaiah  vii.  14 '  ?  Further,  the  Birth  narratives  in  the 
First  and  Third  Gospels  are  closely  associated  with  an 
angelology  in  which  Judaism  generally  and  Apocalyptic 
literature  in  particular  were  steeped,  and  of  which  no 
very  clear  or  consistent  account  has  been  given.  The 
whole  conception  of  angelology  was  in  part  due  to  Deistic 
views  of  God  that  kept  Him  at  a  distance  from  the  world, 
whether  on  account  of  its  unworthiness  or  His  exceeding 
transcendence.  A  ritual  conception  of  holiness  had 
pushed  Him  out  of  all  direct  communication  with  the 
world  ;  angels,  consequently,  were  His  intermediaries. 
Further,  it  seems  to  follow  from  Luke  i.  35,  that  the 
paternal  relationship  is  associated  with  the  Divine  Power, 
indicated  by  the  name  Holy  Spirit,  rather  than  with  the 
First  Person  of  the  Trinity.  And,  finally,  the  Roman 
Church,  by  its  logical  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Con- 
ception of  the  Virgin,  rightly  realises  the  fact  that,  within 
the  whole  system  of  presuppositions  and  ideas  in  which 
this  subject  has  been  enshrined,  the  '  entail  of  heredity  ' 
could  not  be  broken  even  by  such  Virgin  Birth  from  a 
human  mother,  while  the  idea  that  it  could  is  only  possible 
under  the  influence  of  the  old-world  fancy  that  in  con- 
ception the  male  element  plays  the  predominating  role. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  oldest  Gospel  knows  nothing  of 
such  a  story,  and  of  the  purpose  of  the  latest  Gospel  it 
is  expressly  stated  that  '  These  (signs)  are  written  that 
ye  may  believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God  ; 
and  that  believing  ye  may  have  life  in  His  name  '  :  1  yet 
amongst  these  signs  was  not  included  that  of  a  Virgin 
Birth.  This  does  not  indeed  disprove  the  Virgin  Birth  ; 
that  cannot  be  done,  and  in  any  case  arguments  from 
silence  are  always  precarious.  But  it  is  apparent  that 

1   John  20  3l. 
X 


322     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  writer  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  did  not  think  of  it  as  a 
primary  faith-eliciting  factor,  or  necessary  article  of  belief 
in  relation  to  his  idea  of  the  Incarnation,  and  it  is  clear 
that  the  burden  of  the  Apostolic  preaching  was  the  death 
and  resurrection  of  Jesus  rather  than  the  manner  of  His 
birth. 

The  same  is  probably  true  of  St.  Paul.  There  is  no 
reason  to  doubt  that  St.  Paul  held  a  natural  generation 
for  our  Lord.1  Although  we  find  no  definite  argument 
for  or  against  the  doctrine  in  his  writings,  his  was  a  mind 
that  would  certainly  have  laid  great  stress  upon  this 
conception  if  it  had  been  prominent  in  the  Church  in  his 
time  ;  for  to  his  way  of  thinking  the  spirit  came  from 
God.  The  doctrine  arose,  however,  at  a  late  period  in 
the  Church's  history,  and  by  the  time  that  Luke  wrote 
his  Gospel  it  was  widely  held.  The  silence  of  the  earlier 
author  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  may  be  held  to 
corroborate  the  point  of  view  based  on  the  writings  of 
Paul.  Apart  from  the  question  of  fact,  however,  the 
immediate  question  is  whether  such  a  doctrine  is  neces- 
sary— whether  a  full  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  cannot 
be  held  without  it.  More  relentlessly  the  query  may  be 
pressed,  Is  not  such  a  belief  pure  Naturalism,  an  outcome 
of  the  old  static  conception  of  human  nature  or  man,  cut, 
so  to  speak,  to  a  certain  physical  and  spiritual  specificity 
of  type  ?  How  can  a  physical  happening  be  considered 
worthy  proof  or  cause  of  a  moral  achievement  ?  '  He 
was  not  a  physical  production,  but  a  spiritual  bestowal ; 
the  spirit-miracle  of  the  ages,  a  special  revelation  of  the 
Unseen  Heart  of  the  Universe.  The  man  who  cannot 
see  Deity  in  Jesus,  will  see  God  nowhere.'  2  The  motive 
in  the  doctrine  is  abundantly  clear,  but  is  it  not  possible 
that  some  of  the  forms  or  categories  in  which  one  genera- 
tion moulded  its  highest  expression  of  worship  may  be 
subsumed  in,  or  replaced  by,  or  held  along  with,  those  that 
have  been  elaborated  as  the  result  of  the  spiritual  ex- 

1  Cf.  especially  Rom.  i  3 ;  9  * ;  Gal.  4  4. 

2  Dr.  Marshall  Tailing,  The  Science  of  Spiritual  Life,  p.  95. 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    323 

perience  of  a  later  generation  ?  To  the  man  who  has 
seen  in  Jesus  Christ  the  very  revelation  of  God  there  is 
nothing  too  wonderful  that  he  will  not  believe  about 
Him,  although  he  will  also  never  close  his  mind  to  what 
he  may  accept  as  the  results  of  reverent  scholarship 
concerning  the  accounts  of  His  earthly  life.  When  in 
answer  to  our  Lord's  interrogation,  Peter  made  his 
supreme  confession,  he  framed  it  in  words  that  subsume 
the  heights  and  depth  and  length  and  breadth  of  faith. 
And  if  the  generations  that  follow  us  come  to  see  that 
just  as  the  belief  in  Verbal  Inspiration,  based  on  such 
a  passage  as  Rev.  22  18"19,  has  proved  to  be  part  of  a 
beneficent  design  whereby,  in  the  dark  days  when  as 
yet  the  fixing  power  of  the  press  was  unknown,  the 
sacred  text  was  safeguarded  to  a  tolerable  extent  against 
mutilation  by  careless  copyists,  so  the  belief  in  a  Virgin 
Birth  was  instrumental  in  awakening  many  minds 
throughout  the  ages  into  a  realisation  that  God  had 
sojourned  amongst  them  in  the  flesh,  ere  yet  they  had 
developed  the  insight  to  see  the  fact  in  the  wonder  and 
spirituality  of  our  Lord's  moral  character,  it  will  not 
lessen  the  force  of  their  witness  provided  they  too  can 
say  from  the  heart  of  a  personal  experience,  '  Thou  art 
the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God.' l 

When  men's  souls  were  flooded  with  the  light  and  joy 
and  peace  that  came  to  them  through  knowledge  of  Jesus 
Christ,  it  seemed  to  them  as  if  His  love  must  have  been 
eternal.  He  who  so  proved  a  Saviour  to  men  must  have 
existed  with  God  from  the  beginning.  In  reflections 
such  as  these  may  have  in  part  arisen  the  doctrine  of 
the  pre-existence  of  Jesus.  We  have  seen  that  Jesus 
Christ  revealed  in  human  life  what  is  eternally  true  of 
God — His  love  to  man,  His  hatred  of  sin,  the  cost  to 
Him  in  service  and  sacrifice  by  which  alone  it  can  be 
put  away.  And  we  may  well  suppose  that  throughout 
the  ages,  as  men  have  lived  consistently  near  to  God, 

J  Matt.  16". 


324     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

they  have  felt  in  some  dim  and  distant  way  that  all  these 
things  were  true  of  God.  More  prescient  souls  believed 
that  one  day  He  would  make  it  absolutely  clear  to  men 
— they  saw  afar  off  the  day  of  the  Lord  Christ  and  were 
glad.1  At  any  rate  there  is  no  doubt  that  some  of  the 
New  Testament  writers  conceived  religious  history  as 
having  taken  that  form  so  far  as  it  concerned  the 
people  of  past  generations.  They  went  further,  not 
merely  in  elaboration  of  distinctly  Jewish  ideas,  as 
that  all  the  Messianic  actualities  were  pre-existent  with 
God  (e.g.  the  New  Jerusalem,  The  Tabernacle,2  the  '  book 
of  Life,'  3  the  Messiah  Himself),  but  sometimes  they 
actually  adapted  traditional  material  to  their  purpose. 
Thus  St.  Paul,  in  a  wonderful  admonitory  passage 
describing  the  propitious  circumstances  under  which 
the  Israelites  nevertheless  failed,  says  that  '  all  ate 
the  same  spiritual  food,  and  all  drank  the  same  spiri- 
tual drink,  for  all  the  way  they  kept  .drinking  of  a 
spiritual  rock  which  continually  followed  them,  and  this 
rock  was  the  Christ '  (o  %pto-T09,  the  Messiah  ?).4  In 
these  words  he  emphasises  the  fact  of  the  Divine  in  history, 
but  few  will  maintain  that  they  are  intended  to  express 
his  deliberate  thought  about  Jesus  Christ.  So  also 
the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  thinks  of  Moses 
'  considering  obloquy  with  the  Messiah  to  be  richer 
wealth  than  all  Egypt's  treasures.'  5  Moses  suffered 
because  he  believed  in  God's  saving  purpose,  says  this 
writer,  and  in  it  all  had  some  dim  consciousness  that 

1  John  8  ".  -  Heb.  8 ». 

3  Rev.  13  8  (Moffatt's  trans.). 

4  i  Cor.  10  4.     '  This  thought  may  have  been  suggested  to  Paul  by 
tlie  Jewish  tradition  that  the  Israelites  were  accompanied  on  their 
march  by  a  rock  "  globular,  like  a  beehive,"  which  rolled  after  the 
camp.     The  use  of  the  word  spiritual  shows  that  Paul  did  not  himself 
literally  adopt  this  grotesque  tradition,  but  he  appears  in  this  passage 
to  have  adapted  it '  (Prof.  J.  E.  M'Fadyen,  D.D.,  The  Interpreter's 
Commentary  in  loco).     Pre-existence,  in  the  sense  of  his  creation  before 
the  world,  is  even  postulated  of  Moses  in  the  apocalyptic  work,  The 
A  ssuntption  of  Moses. 

6  Heb.  ii  26  (Moffatt's  trans.).     The  writer  apparently  has  Ps.  89  50 
in  his  mind. 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    325 

God  had  an  ultimate  wider  purpose  of  salvation,  which 
would  also  be  accomplished  through  suffering.  He  thinks 
of  Moses  as  feeling  that  he  is  true  to  the  eternal  nature 
of  God  in  his  action,  and  that  God  would  yet  even  more 
wonderfully  manifest  Himself  in  Christ  than  He  was 
doing  in  him.  Or,  once  again,  in  i  Peter  I  n,  it  is  said 
of  the  prophets  that  '  the  spirit  of  Messiah  within  them 
foretold  all  the  suffering  of  Messiah  and  His  afterglory, 
and  they  pondered  when  or  how  this  was  to  come.' 
Scholars  tell  us  that  the  phrase  '  spirit  of  Messiah  '  is 
simply  here  equivalent  to  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  that  we 
must  think  of  the  language  of  the  epistles  as  hortatory 
rather  than  exact  and  definitive.  If  then  these  inter- 
pretations are  correct,  it  will  follow  that  the  passages 
in  question  indicate  a  belief  on  the  part  of  the  writers 
in  expressions  in  times  past  of  that  character  and  activity 
of  God  which  were  ultimately  manifested  in  Jesus  Christ, 
as  also  in  the  vigorous  appreciation  of  these  revelations 
by  highly  sensitive  spiritual  personalities  of  the  past, 
not  merely  in  their  present  but  also  dimly  in  relation  to 
the  future.  But  in  themselves  they  can  hardly  be  taken 
as  evidence  of  the  writers'  belief  in  the  pre-existence  of 
that  historic  individuality  which  was  known  to  men  on 
earth  as  Jesus  Christ. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  certain  of  the  Pauline  epistles 
there  occur  very  familiar  passages  in  which  our  Lord  is 
thought  of  as  a  pre-existent  separate  individuality : 
'  the  image  of  the  invisible  God '  is  certainly  not  God 
Himself.1  These  passages  comprise  some  of  the  most 
difficult  in  Scripture,  and  apparently  yield  very  different 
results  in  different  hands.  The  early  effort  to  guard 
against  tritheism  was  helped  by  the  fact  that  the  word 
'  person '  when  first  used,  did  not  convey  the  meaning 
of  personality  as  we  now  understand  that  word  in  the 
sense  of  distinct  self-conscious  individuality,  but  just 
in  that  measure  it  makes  it  difficult  for  us  to  formulate 

1  Col.  i  »•«•  ;    2  • 10  ;    Phil.  2  ••«  ;    2  Cor.  8  ».     Cf.  also  Heb.  i  «•' 
John  i  »-z. 


326     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

a  clear  conception  of  pre-existence  to-day.  The  develop- 
ment of  language  has  led  us  away  from  the  original  idea.1 
Conceptions  of  Trinity  and  Triunity  must  relate  to  divine 
manifestation  or  activity — a  love  in  God  that  gives  not 
merely  the  Son  but  the  Spirit.  And  it  is  important 
to  remember  in  this  connection,  as  Dr.  Hastings  Rashdall 
reminds  us,2  that  it  was  '  part  of  the  traditional  doctrine 
of  the  Church  '  that  '  the  human  soul  of  Jesus  did  not 
exist  before  His  birth  in  time.'  What  the  Church  has 
taught  is  '  that  the  Second  Person  of  the  Holy  Trinity, 
the  Son  or  Word  of  God,  existed  from  all  eternity  ;  but 
the  human  soul  to  which  that  Word  of  God  was  united 
at  His  birth  did  not  exist  before  that  birth.'  3  The  Word, 
i.e.  the  Immanent  Purpose  or  Wisdom  of  God,  was 
made  flesh.  How  that  Word  was  previously  related  to 
God — in  what  manner  or  form  the  eternal  thoughts  of 
God  are  real  to  Him — no  human  mind  can  conceive.4 

Now  St.  Paul's  statements  in  this  particular  are  infer- 
ences from  the  tremendous  impression  of  the  exalted 
Lord  upon  Him.  His  account  of  the  process  whereby 
that  exaltation  was  attained  is  essentially  dynamic, 
rather  than  static.  The  state  of  being  '  on  an  equality 
with  God '  even  for  this  pre-existent  One  is  conceived  as 
something  to  be  achieved  later  as  the  result  of  suffering. 

1  That  some  forms  of  theological  expression  have  departed  far  from 
Scriptural  teaching  is  clear  from  these  statements  of  Principal  Denney  : 
'  In  spite  of  the  creeds,  there  is  no  such  expression  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment as  believing  in  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  Spirit  is  not  an  object  of 
faith  like  Christ  or  God,  it  is  an  experience  which  comes  to  people 
through  faith.  .  .  .  There  is  no  justification  in  this  for  representing 
the  Spirit  as  a  third  person  in  the  same  sense  as  God  and  Christ  '  (The 
Christian  Doctrine  of  Reconciliation,  pp.  308,  311).  The  New  Testament 
writers  took  their  idea  of  the  Spirit  from  the  Old  Testament,  but 
interpreted  it  entirely  in  the  light  of  their  experience  of  Jesus.  In  one 
passage  (2  Cor.  3  17)  St.  Paul  makes  the  identification  complete.  '  Now 
the  Lord,'  he  says,  '  is  the  Spirit.' 

1  Jesus,  Human  and  Divine,  p.  31. 

*  At  the  same  time  the  New  Testament  nowhere  expressly  speaks  of 
'  an  eternal  Son  of  God  ' ;  the  conception  is  a  logical  inference  from 
other  statements. 

4  '  A  Science  without  mystery  is  unknown  ;  a  Religion  without 
mystery  is  absurd '  (Henry  Drummond,  Natural  Law  in  the  Spiritual 
World,  p.  28). 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    327 

Our  Lord  did  not  think  of  it  as  a  thing  to  be  snatched,  says 
St.  Paul,  but  rather  as  something  to  be  slowly  attained.1 
The  same  point  of  view — '  made  perfect  through  suffer- 
ings ' — is  found  to  hold  the  mind  of  the  author  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.2  Both  writers  start  from  a 
notion  of  pre-existence  and  regard  the  post-humiliation 
state  as  something  higher  than  our  Lord  had  ever  attained 
before.  It  would,  however,  be  unwise  to  attempt  to  find 
any  complete  hard  and  fast  system  in  St.  Paul's  teaching 
about  our  Lord,  and  it  is  worse  than  useless  to  try  and 
tie  him  down  to  a  theory.  Ultimately  he  was  always 
governed  by  the  facts  of  his  own  experience,  and  gives 
the  impression  of  feeling  out  after  things  rather  than  of 
setting  down  fixed  conclusions.  Thus  even  in  his  treat- 
ment of  the  Cross  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians  (chap.  2), 
he  seems  to  say,  '  Do  not  attempt  to  rationalise  :  trust 
rather  to  the  appeal  it  makes.'  The  writings  of  St.  Paul 
have  this  in  common  with  the  Synoptic  Gospels,  that  they 
are  both  of  the  nature  of  first-hand  impressions — in  the 
one  case  of  a  life,  in  the  other  of  an  experience  :  in 
neither  instance  do  the  writers  try  to  round  off  their 
ideas. 

The  majestic  inevitability  and  the  profound  and  under- 
standing tribute  of  these  passages  will  always  remain, 
expressive  of  the  deepest  conviction  that  that  which  has 
superlatively  appealed  to  men  as  Divine  cannot  have 
begun  to  be  at  any  particular  point  in  time,  and  illustra- 
tive of  the  truth  that  the  imagination  shall  never  exhaust 
itself  in  telling  of  the  wonder  of  the  grace  of  God  in  Jesus 
Christ.  And  this  conviction  is  unaffected  however  wide 
the  difference  in  general  outlook  may  be  between  a  view 
of  God's  work  in  the  world  that  considers  man,  conceived 
statically  as  of  one  fixed  type  mental  and  moral,  and  with 
a  racial  history  of  some  6000  years,  to  have  fallen  from  a 

1  Phil.  2  •.  Cf.  Prof.  H.  A.  A.  Kennedy,  D.D.,  The  Expositor's 
Greek  Testament,  in  loco,  to  whose  understanding  the  writer  is  particu- 
larly indebted  at  this  point. 

»  Heb.  2  '•  ;   5  '•'•. 


328     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

stage  of  primitive  innocence  if  not  of  goodness,  so  pro- 
viding the  occasion  for  a  supreme  manifestation  of  the 
divine  love  hi  the  sacrifice  of  a  pre-existent  Christ,  and  a 
view  that  realises  that  that  history  has  covered  probably 
half  a  million  years  of  slow,  upward  human  progress, 
not  unconnected  with  stages  of  animal  history  previous  to 
these,  through  which  man  gradually  has  been  growing  in 
his  knowledge  of  and  likeness  to  God,  until  in  the  fulness 
of  the  times  One  came  in  whom  men  saw  that  God  indeed 
dwelt  and  Who  has  helped  above  all  others  in  deepening 
their  likeness  to  Him.  Regarded  from  such  a  point  of 
view,  with  its  increasing  sense  of  the  value  and  potenti- 
ality of  human  individuality,  the  Incarnation  becomes 
not  so  much  a  defeat  as  a  relief,  not  so  much  a  humilia- 
tion as  an  inspiration,  not  so  much  an  exception  as  a 
perfection.  It  is  Revelation  hi  that  it  showed  men  in 
time  and  space  what  is  eternally  true  of  God,  and  thus 
regarded  the  work  of  Christ  has  been  and  is  an  eternal 
work.  It  is  Redemption  in  that  the  awakened  individual 
who  consciously  and  continuously  puts  his  life  in  direct 
relationship  with  Jesus  Christ,  influenced  and  inspired  by 
His  purpose  and  consciousness  of  the  divine,  receives 
power  to  '  walk  in  newness  of  life.'  '  To  bring  the  con- 
sciousness and  the  presence  and  the  power  of  the  divine 
into  human  life  and  work — this  is  the  ultimate  religious 
problem.  And  the  Man,  Christ  Jesus,  is  the  solution  of 
this  problem.'  x 

In  our  Lord  accordingly  we  see  a  unique  consciousness 
of  a  unique  filial  relation,  yet  with  self-admitted  limita- 
tions of  knowledge,2  and  the  evidence  of  mental  conflict 
and  even  of  uncertainty  at  times  in  connection  with  the 
accomplishment  of  His  life  task.  We  see  a  consciousness 
of  a  vocation  which  developed  into  the  conviction  that 

1  Prof.  H.  A.  Youtz,  The  Enlarging  Conception  of  God,  p.  188. 

*  Matt.  24  38,  and  the  corresponding  Mk.  13  3* ;  even  more  particularly 
Luke  12  60,  '  How  am  I  straitened,'  i.e.  limited,  until  after  the  releasing 
baptism  of  death.— (See  Prof.  J.  F.  Bethune-Baker,  The  Faith  of  the 
Apostles'  Creed,  p.  17.) 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    329 

He  was  the  Messiah  l  in  the  sense  that  He  would  be  a 
Deliverer  2 — would  save  His  people  from  their  miscon- 
ceptions, from  themselves,  from  their  sins,  and  that  He 
would  inaugurate  the  Kingdom  of  God  upon  earth.  We 
see  a  consciousness  of  a  unique  relation  to  His  fellowmen 
as  the  One  who  had  been  chosen  of  God  to  reveal  His  very 
heart,  and  to  introduce  a  new  epoch  in  history,  and  there 
is  nothing  that  He  said  about  Himself  which  has  not  been 
justified  by  history.  '  Christianity,'  says  Professor  Albert 
Schweitzer  in  his  remarkable  missionary  book,3  '  is  for 
him  (i.e.  the  Central  African)  the  light  that  shines  amid 
the  darkness  of  his  fears  ;  it  assures  him  that  he  is 
not  in  the  power  of  nature-spirits,  ancestral  spirits,  or 
fetishes,  and  that  no  human  being  has  any  sinister  power 
over  another,  since  the  will  of  God  really  controls  every- 
thing that  goes  on  in  the  world — 

"  I  lay  in  cruel  bondage, 
Thou  cam'st  and  mad'st  me  free." 

These  words  from  Paul  Gerhardt's  Advent  hymn  express 
better  than  any  others  what  Christianity  means  for 
primitive  man.  That  is  again  and  again  the  thought 
that  fills  my  mind  when  I  take  part  in  a  service  on  a 
mission  station.'  And  what  has  proved  true  in  the  case 
of  the  coloured  people  by  the  Ogowe  River  is  likewise 
verified  by  dwellers  in  Thames  Valley  and  by  the  Seine. 
Joy  and  peace  come  into  human  lives  in  the  degree  in 
which  they  have  been  liberated  from  the  '  demons  '  of  the 
age  in  which  they  live,  and  from  the  '  demons  '  of  their 

1  It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  '  no  Jew  thought  of  the  Messiah 
as  actually  God  or  as  equal  with  God.' — (Dr.  Hastings  Rashdall,  op. 
cit.  p.  38.) 

1  So,  quite  definitely  in  Matt.  20  ",  and  the  corresponding  Mk.  10  «*, 
where  it  is  stated  that  '  the  Son  of  Man  came  ...  to  give  His  life  for 
the  \urpov,  deliverance,  of  many.'  In  Acts  7  ",  Moses  is  described  as 
a  \vT(xar^,  i.e.  deliverer  :  there  is  no  suggestion  of  '  ransom  '  here. 
The  same  word  is  also  used  in  the  Septuagint  in  Ps.  19  "  and  78  ",  and 
rendered  '  deliverer  '  in  Wellhausen's  translation  ;  cf.  also  Gen.  48  w. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  are  several  passages  (Lev.  25  ",  27  l»,  etc.) 
where  the  usage  is  in  accordance  with  the  primary  idea  of  redemption. 

»  On  the  Edge  of  the  Primeval  Forest,  p.  15}. 


330     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

own  '  hearts.'  It  is  simple  matter  of  fact  that  the  whole 
progress  of  life,  whether  we  regard  it  at  the  protozoan 
level,  at  the  stage  of  incipient  humanity,  or  in  the  case  of 
nascent  nationality,  consists  in  the  winning  of  liberty, 
and  that  there  is  no  real  progress  for  humanity  which  is 
not  progress  in  the  consciousness  and  exercise  of  freedom. 
Christianity  is  thus  of  the  very  essence  of  progress. 

Yet  our  Lord's  own  explanation  of  His  life  was  that  it 
was  one  with  the  life  of  God — that  He  so  lived  and  moved 
and  had  His  being  in  God  that  their  character  and  pur- 
poses were  one.  That  was  the  secret  of  His  life,  accord- 
ing to  Himself — not  a  Virgin  birth.  Our  Lord  Himself 
never  gave  that  reason,  never  hinted  at  it.  His  life  was 
a  human  life  of  such  a  kind  that  it  is  only  fully  described 
when  spoken  of  as  '  divine.'  This  does  not  mean  that 
the  '  divine  '  is  merely  the  human  made  perfect  or  become 
infinite  :  it  is  something  more  than  that.  In  the  case  of 
our  Lord,  '  as  in  no  other,  the  Divine  "  personality  " 
expressed  itself  through  a  human  "  personality  "  :  the 
human  personality  was  the  personality  of  God  under  the 
conditions  of  human  life.'  x  The  Christian  narratives  by 
their  use  of  the  supremest  categories  and  conceptions  of 
their  day — crowning  Him  with  many  crowns — testify  to 
the  overpowering  impression  that  our  Lord  produced 
upon  His  contemporaries  and  the  immediately  succeed- 
ing generations.  That  impression  is  a  whole  and  it  is 
consistent  in  its  ascription  of  absolute  worth.  Each  of 
the  writers  says  in  his  own  way,  '  Thou  art  the  Christ, 
the  Son  of  the  Living  God.'  Yet  it  may  be  that  they  gave 
these  particular  explanations  because  they  could  not 
understand  the  reason  that  our  Lord  Himself  gave,  viz. 
His  constant  fellowship  with  God.  His  life  involved  such 
complete  possession  of  Him  by  the  Divine  Energising 
Spirit  that  it  was  completely  in  accord  with  the  life  of  God 
— in  Him  dwelt '  all  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  bodily.' 2 
'  I  have  meat  to  eat  that  ye  know  not  of.'  3  None  of  His 

1  Prof.  J.  F.  Bethune-Baker,  The  Faith  of  the  Apostles'  Creed,  p.  94. 

2  Col.  2  ° ;  cf.  also  John  3 3*,  2  Cor.  5  19.  3  John  4  3-. 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    331 

disciples  lived  even  for  a  moment  on  that  spiritual  plane 
of  constant  and  absolute  communion  with  God  in  com- 
plete surrender  on  which  He  had  continuously  lived. 

This  fulness  and  perfection  of  life  have  usually  been 
expressed  by  the  use  of  the  word  '  sinless/  x  one  of  those 
negative  and  therefore  inadequate  conceptions  which 
the  theology  of  the  future  may  discard.  For  it  implies 
too  much  the  idea  of  one  moving  down  a  stream  and  keep- 
ing clear  of  the  shoals  and  snags  by  fixing  his  eyes  on  the 
buoys  that  mark  them,  whereas  such  willed  and  developed 
God-possession  as  was  our  Lord's,  involves  a  moral  sup- 
remacy to  which  failure  is  foreign,  and  which  advances 
in  permanently  instinctive  relationship  to  what  is  good. 
When  the  writer  to  the  Hebrews  speaks  of  Him  as  '  made 
perfect  through  sufferings,'  2  he  is  not  working  with  the 
old  classical  idea  of  the  6  irdOwv  ^dOw, — as  if  our  Lord 
learned  through  suffering  to  avoid  faults  He  had  already 
committed.  He  did  not  become  sinless  through  suffering, 
but  He  was  thereby  perfected  or  matured  in  sympathy. 
So  filled  was  He  with  the  Spirit  of  God  that  power  streamed 
out  of  Him  into  other  lives  in  physical  and  moral  healing, 
and  that  through  His  will  He  could  exercise  a  control  over 
energy  as  it  appears  in  the  so-called  forces  of  Nature  of  a 
character  that  we  as  yet  do  not  directly  or  fully  understand. 
And  yet  through  it  all  He  Himself  made  no  difference 
between  Himself  and  other  men  except  in  the  degree  in 
which  He  lived  and  moved  and  had  His  being  in  God. 
And  unless  we  are  in  the  same  state  of  mind  as  those  two 
hapless  souls  that  dwelt  amongst  the  tombs  and  asked, 
'  Art  thou  come  hither  to  torment  us  ?  '  3  or  take  refuge 
in  the  position  that  He  cannot  have  meant  what  He  was 
saying,  we  must  believe  Him  when  He  who  knew  so  well 
what  was  in  man,  said,  '  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you, 
He  that  believeth  on  me,  the  works  that  I  do  shall  he 
do  also  ;  and  greater  works  than  these  shall  he  do, 
because  I  go  unto  the  Father.' 4  We  simply  do  not 

1  Cf.  John  8  «•.  »  Heb.  2  ". 

•  Matt.  8  '-•.  «  John  14  '«. 


332     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

begin  to  know  what  are  the  possibilities  of  a  God-filled 
human  life  ;  we  may  see  them  in  Jesus  Christ  if  we  will 
but  look.  We  look  on  other  lives,  and  say  His  was  not 
human,  when  as  a  matter  of  fact  we  are  just  on  the 
threshold  of  understanding  what  personality  is,  and  its 
possibilities  in  relation  to  God.  We  limit  the  word 
'  human  '  in  terms  of  the  knowledge  of  yesterday,  which 
is  the  ignorance  of  to-day,  and  then  we  say  that  what  is 
beyond  that  is  '  divine.'  Jesus  is  beyond  that,  and 
therefore  He  was  divine,  and  the  idea  is  even  welcomed 
in  partial  excuse  for  our  own  failure.  Surely  it  is  truer 
to  say  with  St.  Paul  that  Jesus  was  man,  and  revealed 
to  us  both  what  man  may  be  and  what  God  really  is, 
and  thus  He  is  the  one  Mediator  between  God  and  men.1 
We  tend  to  think  about  Him  in  such  a  kind  of  way — 
which  was  not  His  way  of  thinking  about  Himself — 
as  makes  all  His  sayings  impracticable  and  unreal :  an 
unreal  humanity  is  no  humanity.  We  wrong  our  Lord 
and  minimise  the  purpose  and  achievement  of  His  life 
when  we  explain  it,  as  He  never  did,  in  terms  of  some 
superinduced  conception  of  divinity  distinct  from  His 
humanity.  He  was  a  man  ;  from  that  we  must  start. 
He  was  a  man,  not  a  prodigy,  '  the  first  born  among 
many  brethren.'  2  He  lived  a  human  life  with  all  the  aids 
and  possibilities  that  other  men  have  ;  but  He  used  them 
as  no  other  man  ever  did.  When  He  spoke  to  men 
the  most  daring  words  that  ever  fell  from  human  lips, 
challenging  them  in  the  supreme  moral  imperative,  '  Be 
ye  perfect  even  as  your  Heavenly  Father  is  perfect,'  3 
He  was  telling  of  that  which  He  had  achieved  through 
His  own  willing  to  be  in  perfect  communion  with  God. 
When  He  said,  '  Father,  not  my  will  but  thine  be  done,' " 
He  showed  the  reality  of  temptation  for  Himself  in  thus 
willing  His  own  will  into  unison  with  that  of  God. 

We  have  said  that  such  doctrines  as  the  Virgin  Birth 
and  Pre-existence  were  fundamentally  important  to  the 

1   i  Tim.  2  B  ('  Himself  man,'  R.V.).  •  Rom.  8  as>. 

3  Matt.  5  «.  4  Luke  22  **. 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    333 

early  Christian  communities  in  that,  in  addition  to 
constituting  their  supreme  forms  of  homage  to  our  Lord, 
they  supplied  explanations  of  His  unique  Personality. 
Now  it  is  rather  remarkable  that  there  is  no  single  New 
Testament  writer  who  associates  the  doctrines  of  the 
Virgin  Birth  and  of  Pre-existence.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
they  are  quite  different  and  unrelated  views,  and  yet 
they  were  held  together  without  any  sense  of  incongruity 
in  that  collection  of  writings  which  constitutes  the  New 
Testament.  In  the  Gospels  indeed  we  may  find  several 
lines  of  explanation  of  the  Person  of  our  Lord.  The 
First  and  Third  Gospels  contain  genealogies  which  suggest 
a  spiritual  heredity,  both  on  His  father's  and  His  mother's 
side.  It  may  prove  a  real  evidence  of  the  inspiration  of 
the  Bible  to  a  generation  which  is  just  beginning  to  under- 
stand the  scope  and  mechanism  of  Heredity,  that  genea- 
logies which  only  puzzled  previous  generations  should  be 
included  as  part  of  the  attempt  to  explain  Him.  Along 
with  the  genealogies  they  contain  the  story  of  His  birth 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  and  a  virgin  mother.  A  third  explana- 
tion is  given  in  terms  of  the  idea  of  a  pre-existent  Heavenly 
One  who  comes  to  earth.  The  oldest  of  the  Gospels 
gives  as  its  explanation  a  narrative  of  the  descent  of  the 
Spirit  of  God  upon  our  Lord,  accompanied  by  a  voice 
which  in  the  Third  Gospel  is  represented  as  saying, 
'  This  day  have  I  become  thy  Father.'  x  That  is  to  say, 
it  suggests  that  Divine  Sonship  was  conferred  at  our 
Lord's  baptism,  which  was  a  crisis  in  His  growing  aware- 
ness of  Himself  and  His  mission.2  The  vague  forecasts 
of  His  earlier  days  reached  a  climax  when  He  put  Himself 
side  by  side  with  the  men  and  women  at  the  Jordan  and 
had  the  spiritual  consciousness  of  a  new  and  complete 
oneness  with  God  ;  with  this  there  came  a  new  conscious- 
ness of  spiritual  power,  and  He  went  forth.  And  this 
is  practically  what  Justin  Martyr  taught  in  the  Early 

1  Luke  3  ".     See  Moffatt's  trans,  and  note  in  loco. 
3  This  may  also  have  been  St.  Peter's  understanding  :  cf.  Acts  10  ", 
uud  the  whole  atmosphere  of  thought  in  < 1T  31. 


334     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Church  during  the  period  when  the  doctrines  of  the  Pre- 
existent  Logos  and  Virgin  Birth,  which  had  taken  shape  as 
the  result  of  further  reflection,  were  still  slowly  making 
their  way.1  Nevertheless,  the  fact  of  Christ  remains, 
solitary  and  salvatory,  and  it  is  quite  certain  that  a 
generation  that  feels  the  insufficiency  of  any  one  attempted 
explanation  will  yet  be  unwilling  to  discard  any  particular 
Biblical  interpretation,  being  only  the  more  conscious 
that  all  the  generations  in  every  land  and  all  their  dis- 
tinctive conceptions  will  never  exhaust  the  wonder  that 
is  in  Christ  Jesus,  our  Lord. 

In  conclusion  ;  any  attempt  to  get  behind  the  dogmas 
and  phrases  of  Primitive  Christianity,  and  so  to  reach 
the  religious  convictions  which  they  represented  for  that 
time  and  generation,  will  always  be  subject  to  the  control 
of  the  Christian  experience  of  to-day.  We  want  to  know, 
if  the  tour  de  force  is  possible,  just  what  it  is  that  would 
have  made  a  modern  believing  man  instinctively  feel  at 
home  in  the  Church  that  met  in  the  House  of  Cecilia.2 
There,  just  as  now,  assembled  men  and  women  wrhose 
hearts  leapt  up  responsively  to  the  story  of  the  spiritual 
experiences,  whether  read  from  written  records,  or 
spoken  at  first  or  second  hand  report,  of  those  who  had 
companied  with  the  Lord ;  and  under  the  action  of  the 
illuminating  and  informing  Spirit  of  God  they  entered 
into  the  distinctively  Christian  experience  of  communion 
through  Jesus  Christ  with  God,  communion  with  Jesus 
Christ  in  God.  In  this  way  they  were  and  are  alike 
able  to  test  for  themselves  all  that  He  said  about  God, 
and  they  find  it  so  true  that  He  becomes  their  supreme 
religious  authority.  They  feel  closest  to  God  when 
they  are  nearest  to  Jesus.  He  so  perfectly  interprets 
God  to  them  that  in  the  end  they  can  only  say,  '  He  is 

1  The  doctrine  of  the  Virgin  Birth  formed  no  part  of  the  Nicene  or 
Athanasian  Creeds  (A.D.  325)  ;  although  there  is  '  no  doubt  of  its  great 
antiquity'  as  a  credal  article.  See  Prof.  J.  F.  Bethune-Baker,  The 
Faith  of  the  Apostles'  Creed,  p.  66  ff. 

1  Cf.  Walter  Pater,  Marius  the  Epicurean,  vol.  ii.  p.  92  ff. 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    335 

not  merely  the  revelation  of  God — He  is  God,  manifest 
in  the  flesh.'  A  He  is  the  One  Who  has  gone  ahead  blazing 
the  trail,  '  the  Pioneer  of  their  salvation,'  2  yet  saying 
to  men  '  Follow  me,'  and  enabling  them  to  follow.  He 
is  the  One  Who  has  arrived,  while  they  are  but  on  the 
way.  And  just  so  certainly  as  we  know  that  we  shall  not 
attain  to  the  stature  of  perfect  manhood  in  Christ  Jesus 
on  this  terrestrial  plane  of  things,  yet  is  it  sure  that  that 
is  the  goal  of  our  spiritual  existence  which  He  sets  before 
us,  drawing  no  absolute  line  between  Himself  and  us 
in  at  any  rate  one  fundamental  respect,3  yet  proving  in 
the  experience  of  men  to  be  a  recreative  and  transform- 
ing power, — '  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation.' 4  His 
thought  of  Himself  in  relation  to  us  is  that  of  a  moun- 
tain peak  which  at  some  future  stage  we  may  scale  : 
hitherto  we  have  tended  to  think  of  it  as  a  star. 

And  the  Gospel,  the  '  Good  News,'  takes  on  a  wider 
sweep,  for  the  revelation  of  God  is  never  complete.  Men 
have  often  crucified  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  but  from  its 
lips  they  shall  never  hear  the  words  '  It  is  finished.' 
For  along  with  the  realisation  that  the  world  in  which 
we  find  ourselves  is  ultimately  a  spiritual  world,  goes 
the  sense  that  Nature  is  actually  rooted  and  only  fulfilled 
in  grace,  because  it  is  a  world  into  which  in  the  fulness 
of  the  times  One  came  Who  not  only  was  the  revelation 
of  the  heart  of  God  but  Who  is  now,  as  He  was  in  the 
days  of  His  flesh,  the  only  Saviour  of  mankind.  We 
reach  a  point  of  view  from  which  we  begin  to  under- 
stand that  the  motive  of  the  world  process  as  a  whole  is 
Love,  that  from  the  time  that  the  creative  self-limitation 
or  self-emptying  of  God  culminated  in  the  production 
of  man,  His  Spirit  has  been  striving  with  men  through- 
out the  ages — seeking  for  ever  completer  self-expres- 
sion in  the  sons  of  men  until  this  was  perfectly  attained 
in  the  Son  of  Man.  But  so  to  think  is  to  reconstruct 

1  Dr.  H.  S.  Coffin,  Some  Christian  Convictions,  p.  90. 

1  Heb.  2  10  (Moffatt's  trans.). 

»  Mark  3  »•  •».  «  Rom.  i  ". 


336     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

our  thought  of  history.  For  it  is  to  reaffirm  that  the 
life  of  the  historic  Jesus  was  a  recapitulation  in  mundane 
setting  of  time  and  space  of  the  eternal  activity  and 
character  of  God.  God  is  eternally  that  which  He 
showed  Himself  to  be  in  Jesus  Christ.  Yet  the  God 
manifest  in  Him  has  been  from  the  beginning  of  human 
history  enlightening  every  man,  laying  down  His  life  in 
some  of  them,  and  receiving  it  again.  He  is  the  reality 
underlying  all  these  spiritual  outgoings  that  in  differing 
degrees  have  characterised  epochs  and  nations  and  in- 
dividuals. In  human  history  He  has  been  implicitly 
working  from  the  beginning  in  increasing  revelation,  and 
humanity  was  represented  in  Him  ere  its  divinity  was 
represented  on  earth  in  Jesus  Christ.  Calvary  itself  was 
the  complete  and  final  expression  of  a  law  of  life  which 
had  been  in  operation  from  the  beginning  of  life,  at  first 
unconsciously  and  later  in  varying  degrees  of  conscious 
imperfection  and  limitation — that  only  by  service  and 
sacrifice  even  unto  death  can  sin  be  put  away.  And 
this  is  to  realise  that  not  once  but  many  times  has  God 
been  buffeted  and  bruised  and  spit  upon  and  rejected 
and  despised  of  men,  laying  down  His  life  in  many  of 
His  servants  who  saw  the  day  of  the  Lord  Christ  afar 
off  and  were  glad,  that  He  might  receive  it  again  in  the 
newer  and  better  conditions  that  their  lives  of  faith  and 
service  and  suffering  inaugurated.  It  is  to  remember  with 
the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  that  still  through 
the  ages  Jesus  Christ  is  crucified  afresh  and  put  to  an 
open  shame,  and  that  Christian  men  and  women  are 
called  upon  '  to  fill  up  that  which  is  lacking  in  the  suffer- 
ings of  Christ ' l  and  shall  be  until  mankind  comes  to 
the  knowledge  of  the  truth,  and  is  one  in  Him.  '  Christ 
was  crucified  not  to  save  us  from  crucifixion,  but  to  show 
us  how  the  perfect  man  submits  to  it,  and  how  all  of  us 
are  called  to  submit  to  it.  He  lays  down  His  life  in  as 
many  selves  as  He  can  find  with  consecration  enough  to 
let  Him  do  it.'  2  Through  Him  men  can  come  into  an 

i  Col.  i  24  °  J.  W.  Lee,  The  Religion  of  Science,  p.  288. 


HISTORIC  JESUS  AND  COSMIC  CHRIST    337 

experience  of  God  which  means  salvation,  moral  renewal, 
and  the  true  development  of  personality.  And  when  a 
man  has  come  into  this  relation  with  the  Eternal,  under- 
standing God  fully  in  terms  of  that  manifestation  in  Jesus 
which  breaks  our  hearts  by  its  tenderness  and  challenges 
our  loyalty  by  its  truth,  he  sees  with  St.  Paul  that  in 
Him  the  whole  purpose  of  the  universe  literally  '  stands 
together,' l  and  comes  to  realise  that  he  has  missed  the 
whole  meaning  of  life,  and  life  itself,  if  he  has  not 
entered  into  active  living  relationship  with  God  through 
Him.  He  also  understands  with  St.  John  that  '  all  that 
is  in  the  world,  the  desire  of  the  flesh  and  the  desire  of 
the  eyes  and  the  proud  glory  of  life  (and  thought), 
belongs  not  to  the  Father  but  to  the  world ;  and  the 
world  is  passing  away  with  its  desire,  while  he  who  does 
the  will  of  God  abide th  for  ever.'  2 

1  Col.  i  "•  *  i  John  2  »••  "  (based  on  Moffatt's  trans.). 


INDEX 


Acheulean  climate,  102 ;  cultural 
phase,  56,  90,  91,  143  ;  fossil  re- 
mains, loo-ioi  ;  implements,  99- 
100. 

Acton,  Lord,  186,  187,  190. 

Africa,  Palaeolithic  man  in,  104,  109, 
1 10,  143,  144  ;  primitive  mammals 
in,  224. 

Age  of  the  earth,  48-50. 

Ages,  geological,  50,  51. 

Alpine  race,  169,  172. 

Alps  in  Great  Ice  Age,  52. 

Altamira  Cave,  125,  127,  138. 

America,  Palaeolithic  man  in,  103, 
104. 

American  monkeys,  29,  30. 

Amoeba,  201. 

Amphibians,  origin  of,  222. 

Anau,  excavations  at,  173,  175. 

Anthropoid  apes,  29-35,  70 ;  fossil 
forms,  65  ;  migrations  of,  72,  77, 
143  ;  origin  of,  72  ;  points  of  con- 
tact with  man,  37-45. 

Apocalyptic  period,  282-284,  289. 

Aralo-Caspian  depression,  171. 

Arboreal  life,  effects  of,  43,  44,  71,  73, 
77- 

Archaeopteryx,  223. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  231. 

Art,  Aurignacian,  125-127  ;  Magdal- 
enian,  136-142. 

Asia,  Central,  as  original  home  of 
man,  76,  151,  171. 

Atonement,  doctrine  of,  318. 

Aurignacian  art,  125-127 ;  cultural 
phase,  56,  57,  90,  91,  119-128 ; 
fauna,  124 ;  fossil  remains,  120- 
124  ;  industry,  124-125  ;  origin  of 
race,  143-146  ;  religion,  137,  142. 

Australian,  aboriginal,  37,  62,  146, 
149  n. 

Azilian  cultural  phase,  91,  148-153. 

Babylonia,  48,  54,  88,  89,  171,  173. 

Balfour,  Earl  of,  183. 

Baltic  Sea,  changes  in,  150,  153,  154, 

*59- 

Bateson,  Prof.  W.,  234,  235. 
338 


Beddard,  F.  E.,  32. 

Bergson,  Prof.  H.,  265,  267,  269,  274. 

Berry,  Prof.,  87. 

Bethune-Baker,   Prof.   J.   F.,  320  n, 

328  n,  330,  334  n. 
Biogenetic   Law,  see  Recapitulation 

Theory. 

Birds,  origin  of,  223. 
Blewett,  Prof.  G.  J.,  6,  8,  270. 
Boule,  M.,  90  n,  96,  107,  in,  123  n. 
Brachycephaly,  98,  147,  150-152  ;   in 

Neanderthal  skulls,  108. 
Brain  characters  in  man  and  apes,  38, 

39,  76  ;  development  in  mammals, 

68-76,  239  ff. 
Brigham,  A.  P.,  14,  15. 
Bronze  Age,  48,  134,  160,  161,  163, 

165,  167,  173,  176,  178. 
Briinn  skeleton,  123,  131. 
Briix  skeleton,  131. 
Burial,  Aurignacian,  142,  143  ;  Mous- 

terian,    114-117;     Neolithic,    164- 

167,  175- 

Campignian  cultural  phase,  91,  152- 

153- 

Capsian  culture,  145-146,  149,  150. 
Cell  theory,  critique  of,  200-202. 
Celts,  177,  178,  1  80. 
Chancelade  skeleton,  132. 
Charles,  Prof.,  281  n,  287  »,  291  n. 
Chatelperron  knife,  124,  125,  145. 
Chellean  cultural  phase,  56,  82,  90,  91, 

92,  104  ;  fauna,  101  ;  climate,  101  ; 

implements,  95,  99,  100. 
Chimpanzee,  33-35,  39,  43,  45,  65,  77, 

no,  143. 


Chronology,    Biblical,    48,    54  ;     of 

Great  Ice  Age,  53-57,  63. 
Coelenterate,  dividuality  in,  204,  205, 


206,  207. 
Coffin,  Dr.  H.  S.,  335. 
Colloids,  16. 

Combe  Capelle  skeleton,  123. 
Commonwealth,    British,    characters 

of,  190,  192. 

Conditional  Immortality,  294-299. 
Conklin,  Prof.  E.  G.,  181,  191. 


INDEX 


339 


Consciousness,  236  ;  relation  to  brain, 

265,  266. 
Copper  Age,  176. 
Coup-de-poing,  99,  100,  112,  124. 
Cranial  capacity,  apes  and  man,  38, 

39,    76 ;     Cromagnon    race,    121  ; 

Eoanthropus,  96,  118  ;   Mousterian 

man,  106  ;   Rhodesian  man,  109. 
Creation,  8-10,  25  ;    accounts  of,  88- 

89,  263,  276  ;  as  kenosis,  25,  267. 
Criterion  of  survival,  227-229. 
Croll's  theory,  51. 
Cromagnon  skeletons,   120-123,   I24> 

!32,   144- 

Crystals,  growth  of,  199. 
Cult  of  the  bison,  140. 
Cunningham,  J.  T.,  20  n. 

Dancing,  ritual,  137,  139,  142. 
Darwin,  Charles,  81. 
Davidson,  Prof.  A.  B.,  280. 
Dead,  worship  of,  116,  149. 
Denudation,  14. 
Dendy,  Prof.  A.,  209,  213  n. 
Denney,  Principal,  289,  326  n. 
Diet,  change  of  in  man,  78. 
Disharmony,  physical,  44  ;    of  skull, 

124. 
Dividuality,  200 ;   in  Protozoa,  201  ; 

in   Coelenterata,  206  ;    in   worms, 

208. 

Divine  mind,  23. 
Dods,  Prof.  Marcus,  293. 
Dog,  153,  157. 
Dolichocephaly,  98  n,  124,  147,  150, 

151- 
Domestication  of  animals,  153,  158, 

160,  173. 

Double  sepulture,  133. 
Drummond,  Henry,  27, 43,  254,  326  n. 
Dubois,  Eugene,  85-86. 
Duckworth,  W.  L.  H.,  29  n,  34  «,  41, 

86. 

Dwellings,  Neolithic,  158,  159. 
Dysteleology,  242. 

Earth,  age  of  the,  48-50. 

Egyptian  fossil  apes,  65, 70 ;  races,  63. 

Electrical  theory  of  matter,  9. 

Electron,  9,  198. 

Embryology,  human,  40-42,  204. 

Energy,  9,  10,  16-19,  22,  264,  265. 

English  Channel,  past  history  of,  58, 
loi,  157. 

Environment,  factor  in  Evolution,  15, 
20-22,  71,  73,  76, 170,  225,  227,  228, 
229,  230,  235,  236,  244,  268,  269, 
296,  306,  314  ;  fitness  of  inorganic, 
10-14. 

Eoanthropus,  93-99,  no,  118. 


Eoliths,  80-85,  95- 
Ether,  9. 

Evolution,  4, 13,20-22,  27,  chaps,  is., 
x.,  xi.  ;  and  Jesus  Christ  311-319. 

Faith,  4,  5. 

Fall,  the.  253,. 312 

Fauna,  during  Ice  Age,  60-62. 

Feudal  system,  184,  187. 

Fishes,  origin  of,  220-222. 

Fiske,  John,  246. 

Fitness  of  environment,  10-14. 

Flower  and  Lydekker,  29  n,  34,  38,  39. 

Fore-limb,  development  of,  69,  72,  74. 

France,  development  of  nationality  in, 

184,  185, 

Fraser,  Sir  J.  G.,  89  n. 
Freedom,  186,  189,  191,    chap,    xi., 

269. 

Freud,  S.,  2,  244,  298. 
Furfooz  race,  151,  169. 

Gargas  cave,  127,  138,  141. 
Geikie,  Prof.  J.,  52  n,  54,  56,  148. 
Genesis  creation  narrative,  88,  89. 
German  people,  181,  182. 
Gibbon,  31,  32,  33,  40,  65,  72,  74,  77- 
Gibraltar  skull,  107,  109. 
Gladstone,  Mr.,  186. 
God,  and  the  World,  8,  10,  chap.  xii.  ; 

as  Love,  25,  chap.  xiv. 
Gorilla,  33,  35,  38,  43,  65,  76. 
Grace,  270. 
Great  Ice  Age,  51-62, 156, 171  ;  fauna 

of,  60-62  ;  phases  of,  52-57. 
Gregory,  W.  K.,  29  «,  45,  96,  104  n. 
Grimaldi  caves,  121-123. 
Grosgartach,  Neolithic  village  at,  158, 

159- 
Growth  in  crystals,  199 ;  in  organisms, 

199,  200. 
Guyer,  Prof.,  20 

Hairiness,  loss  of,  81. 

Haldane,  Prof.  J.  S.,  19. 

Hauser,  M.  O.,  105,  123. 

Heidelberg  man,  92,  93,  95,  97. 

Henderson,  Prof.  L.  J.,  10-14. 

Heredity,  21. 

Hesiod,  176. 

Hominidae,  sec  Man. 

Homosimius,  72,  73,  78,  79,  80,  245, 

246,  247,  249,  252. 
Ilunzinger,  A.  W.,  306,  307. 
Huxley,  Julian,  211,  213,  214. 

—  T.  H.,  28,  45,  106. 
Hydra,  204,  205. 

Immanence,  divine,  272,  273. 
Immortality,  Aurignacian  belief  in, 


340     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 


142,143;  Mousterian  belief  in,  116- 
118  ;  Neolithic  belief  in,  167,  215  ; 
relation  to  Individuality,  231-233, 
chap.  xiii.  ;  in  Old  Testament,  276- 
282  ;  in  New  Testament,  284-301. 

Incarnation,  central  place  of  the,  311- 
3i9- 

Indeterminism  and  life,  236  ;  amongst 
Protozoa,  238. 

Individual,  definition,  198,  chap.  ix. ; 
in  Protozoa,  200-204  ;  in  Coelen- 
terata,  204-208  ;  worms,  208-210, 
chap.  ix. 

Indo-European  people,  171,  177. 

Infancy,  death  in,  233  «  ;  prolonga- 
tion of,  246  ;  characters  of,  42-44. 

Internationalism,  191,  194. 

Iron  Age,  176. 

Jennings,  Prof.  H.  S.,  211,  238. 

Jesus  Christ,  7,  24,  25,  26,  259-261, 
chap.  xiv.  ;  teaching  on  Immor- 
tality, 284-288  ;  Resurrection  of, 
299-301  ;  uniqueness  of,  260,  305- 
308. 

Johnstone,  Prof.  J.,  199. 

Jones,  F.  Wood,  42,  43,  67  n,  73. 

Josephus,  283. 

Keane,  A.  H.,  36  n,  37,  39,  45,  165. 
Keith,  Sir  Arthur,  63,  64,  65,  66,  80, 

87,90*1,  92, 93, 96,  98,  in,  121, 155, 

156,  180. 
Kennedy,  Prof.  H.  A.  A.,  278  n,  288  n, 

291,  320  »,  327  n. 
Kenosis,  25,  267,  313. 
Kent's  Cavern,  101,  134. 
Kesslerloch  Cave,  134,  135,  136,  139. 
Kidd,  Benjamin,  21. 
Kitchen-midden  axes,  152. 
Krapina  skeletons,  108,  151. 

La  Chapelle-aux-Saints,  skeleton,  106, 

Ladd/Prof.  G.  T.,  234. 

La  Ferrassie,  skeleton,  107,  116. 

Lake-dwellings,  158,  173,  174,  175. 

La  Madeleine  prehistoric  site,  132. 

Lamarck,  4. 

Land  bridges,  58,  77,  102,  143,  144. 

Language  as  test  of  nationality,  182, 

183. 

La  Quina  skeleton,  107. 
League  of  Nations,  190,  194,  195. 
Leckie,  Dr.  J.  H.,  284,  293-297. 
Le  Conte,  Joseph,  316. 
Lee,  J.  W.,  336.     ' 
Leenhardt,  Prof.  F.,  237,  241,  248, 

250,  251,  253,  262. 
Lemurs,  29,  68,  70. 


Les  Combarelles  cave,  126,  127. 

Levallois  scraper,  100,  112. 

Life,  10-14  ;  characteristics  of,  16-20; 
early  manifestations  of,  16, 217,  218. 

Lodge,  Sir  Oliver,  9. 

Sir  Richard,  184  »,  185. 

Love,  in  God,  25,  270,  294  ;  mani- 
fested in  Jesus  Christ,  260. 

Lull,  Prof.  R.  S.,  35,  216,  217,  219, 
220,  222,  223  n,  224,  244. 

Macalister,  Prof.  R.  A.  S.,  61  «,  62, 
83,  90  n,  116-118,  124,  131,  134  n, 
138,  144,  145,  149,  150,  152,  153- 

M  Dowall,  S.  A.,  269,  271,  272. 

Macfadyen,  Prof.  J.  E.,  324  n. 

Macfarlane,  Prof.  J.  M.,  17,  201  n, 
217,  218,  225. 

Macintyre,  Prof.  R.  G.,  280,  285. 

Magdalenian  art,  134-140 ;  cultural 
phase,  56,  57,  90,  91,  132-142, 145  ; 
fauna,  133  ;  fossil  remains,  132, 133  ; 
industry,  133,  134  ;  religion,  142. 

Magic,  140,  142. 

Maglemose  deposits,  150. 

Mainage,  Prof.  Th.,  114  n,  139,  140. 
142  144  n. 

Mammals,  characters  of,  28  ;  brain 
development  of,  68-80 ;  origin  of, 
223  ;  primitive  forms,  224. 

Man,  the  religious  creature,  3  ;  an- 
tiquity of,  chap.  iii.  ;  origin  of, 
chap.  iv.  ;  place  in  nature,  chap.  i.  ; 
points  of  contact  with  anthropoid 
apes,  37-44  ;  racial  divisions,  36-37. 

Marett,  R.  R.,  114  n,  141. 

Marmosets,  29,  70. 

Marshall,  A.  Milnes,  41. 

Mathews,  A.  P.,  16  n. 

Matter,  electrical  theory  of,  9. 

Mauer  mandible,  92,  93,  95,  96,  97. 

Mazzini,  and  nationality,  187. 

Mediterranean  race,  169. 

Megalithic  structures,  163-165. 

Mesolithic  man,  47,  113,  chap.  vii. 

Messianic  conceptions,  280,  281,  324, 

Metchnikoff,  E.,  42  »,  44. 
Migration,  human,  112,  143,  162,  163, 

170,  171. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  189. 
Mind  and  energy,  10,  264-266 ;  and 

brain,  265-267. 

Mixture  of  races,  120,  131,  171. 
Moffatt,  Prof.  James,  313. 
Moore,  Prof.  B.,  16  n,  17,  315. 
Moral  factor  in  survival,  231,  248  ff., 

chap.  xiii. ;  early  moral  standards, 

252,  258. 
order,  259. 


INDEX 


341 


Mousterian  cultural  phase,  56,  62,  90, 
91,  92,  105-118,  119,  120,  131; 
climate,  102 ;  fauna,  106,  113  ; 
fossil  remains,  105-111  ;  imple- 
ments, 111-113  ;  religion,  114-118. 

Munro,  Dr.  R.,  79. 

Mutilation,  practice  of,  127,  143. 

Napoleon,  186,  302,  303. 

Nation,  179,  190. 

Nationality,  place  and  function  of, 
chap.  viii. 

Naturalism,  13. 

Neanderthal  man,  see  Mousterian. 

Negro,  36,  62,  123,  143. 

Neo-Lamarckian  factors,  4,  20,  21, 
225. 

Neolithic  man,  47,  53,  chap.  vti.  ; 
characters  of,  147,  155  ;  dwellings, 
I58,  159  ;  fauna,  160  ;  geography, 
156,  157 ;  industries,  161  ;  im- 
plements, 1 6 1, 162  ;  skeletons,  155  ; 
trade,  162,  163  ;  religion,  166,  167, 
174- 

Neopallium,  67,  68,  241. 

Neo-Weismannism,  20. 

Nicolai,  Prof.  G.  F.,  181,  182,  196  n. 

Nordic  race,  172. 

Ofnet  cave,  149,  151. 

Old  Testament  conception  of  Immor- 
tality, 276-282. 

Orang,  32,  33,  43,  65,  77. 

Origin  of  amphibians,  222  ;  fishes, 
220-222;  of  life,  16,  21,,  218;  of 
mammals,  223  ;  of  man,  65,  66, 
chap.  iv. 

Osborn,  H.  F.,  10  »,  17  n,  22  n,  96, 
226  n. 

Palaeolithic   man,    47,    53,    54,    78, 

chaps,  v.  and  vi.  ;    characters  of, 

103. 

Paramaecium,  200. 
Paul,   St.,   7,   250,   271,    283,   299 ; 

teaching  on  Immortality,  288-292  ; 

and  doctrine  of  Virgin  Birth,  322  ; 

doctrine    of     Pre-existence,    325- 

326. 

Peiick  and  Bruckner,  42,  53,  56. 
Personality,  divine,  273. 
Perthes,  Boucher  de,  47,  100. 
Piltdown  skull,  93-99. 
Pithecanthropus,  85-88,  93. 
Platonic  conception  of  Immortality, 

231,  291. 

Pleistocene,  ste  Great  Ice  Age. 
Pliocene  man,  question  of,  63,  64,  83, 

84. 
Pottery,  147,  161,  163,  169. 


Pre-existence,   doctrine  of,   323-328, 

Primates,  29,  64,  65,  67. 
Pringle-Pattison,  Prof.,  22,  24. 
Protestantism   and   development    of 

nationality,  185. 

Pumpelly,  Raphael,  171,  173,  226. 
Purgatory,  290  n. 
Purpose  in  the  world  process,  21-23, 

242. 

Rashdall,  Dr.  Hastings,  326,  329  n. 
Rayleigh,  Lord,  49. 
Read,  Prof.  Carveth,  78. 
Recapitulation  theory,  40,  42,   205, 

243- 
Regeneration,    in   organic   kingdom, 

205. 
Religion,  affected   by   the   War,  2  ; 

character  of,   3  ;    of  Aurignacian 

man,  137, 142  ;  of  Mousterian  man, 

114-118;    of  Neolithic  man,   166, 

167,  174. 
Reproduction,    in    animal    kingdom, 

209-212. 

Resurrection,    development   of   doc- 
trine,  280-283 ;     of   Jesus   Christ, 

299-301. 
Retrogression     in     evolution,     235, 

242. 
Revolution,  geological,  16  ;   Russian, 

i. 

Rhodesian  skull,  109,  no. 
Robinson,  Dr.  Louis,  43. 
Roman  Catholicism  and  nationality, 

185,  187. 
Russia,  Border  States,  183,  189,  193  ; 

Palaeolithic  man  in,  136. 
Rutot,  A.,  56,  82,  84. 

Schoolmen,  attitude  to  theology,  6, 

8. 

Schuchert,  Prof.,  15,  16  n. 
Schwalbe,  Prof.  G.,  87,  131. 
Schweitzer,  Prof.  A.,  329. 
i  Scotland,    Azilian   culture    in,    152  ; 

geological  change  in,  156  ;  people* 

of,  1 80  ;   political  development  of, 

185,  192. 

Selenka,  42,  85  n. 
Self-determination,  243  ff. 
Sharman,  H.  B.,  285  »,  286. 


Shell-heaps,  Danish,  152-153. 
Sheol,  278-282,  283. 
Sight,  development  of,  67-71,  239. 
Simiidae,  see  Anthropoid  Apes. 
Sin,  253,  272,  273. 
Sinlessuess  of  Jesus,  331. 
Sirgenstein  cave,  128,  129,  134. 
Smell,  development  of,  67-69. 


342     THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  IMMORTALITY 


Smith,  Prof.  Elliot,  63  ;  on  develop- 
ment of  mammalian  brain,  67-77, 
88,  96,  99,  no. 

Sohm,  Prof.  Rudolf,  315. 

Sollas,  Prof.  W.  J.,  on  eoliths,  83  «, 
84,  146  n. 

Solutrean  cultural  phase,  55,  56,  57, 
90,  128-132;  fauna,  130;  fossil 
remains,  130,  131 ;  industry,  131- 
132. 

Speech,  86,  98,  247. 

Spy  skeletons,  107. 

State,  the,  190 ;  as  an  organism, 
213-215. 

Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  307. 

Steps  in  evolution,  218,  219. 

Stereoscopic  vision,  effects  of,  70,  71. 

Strepyan  cultural  phase,  90,  91,  99. 

Suffering,  270. 

Supra-nationalism,  191. 

Switzerland  and  nationality,  182,  183. 

Tabu,  115. 

Tailing,  Dr.  Marshall,  310,  318,  322. 

Tardenoisian  culture,  145,  150,  151. 

Tarsius,  68-70. 

Teeth  in  man  and  apes,  31,  39,  42  ; 

reduction  in  man,  44,  80. 
Teleology,  21-23,  242. 
Tertiary  man,  63,  64,  83,  84. 
Tertullian,  23. 
Thames  valley,  58, 101, 102. 
Theism,  23,  265,  chap.  xii. 
Theology,  place  of,  in  thought,  6-8. 
Thomson,  Prof.  J.  A.,  21,  218,  236, 

255,  266  n. 
Tilbury  man,  155. 
Totemism,  142  n. 
Transcendence,  divine,  272,  273  ;   in 

man,  272-2/4. 


Tree-shrews,  68. 

Trepanning,  evidence  of,  166,  167. 
Trinity,  doctrine  of,  321,  326. 
Tuc  d'Audoubert  cave,  137,  140. 
Tunzelmann,  G.  W.  de,  9  n,  267. 
Tyler,  Prof.  J.  M.,  160,  163,  167,  176, 
177,  228. 

Uniqueness    of    J3SU3    Christ,    260, 

305-308,  328,  329. 
United  States  of  America,  181,  187, 

193,  195- 

Universalism,  284,  290. 
Uplift,  geological,  14,  15. 

Verbal  Inspiration,  323. 
Versailles  Peace  Treaty,  189,  194. 
Vestigial  structures,  44. 
Vienna,  Congress  of,  186,  194. 
Virgin  Birth,  304,  319-323,  330,  333, 


334- 

Volvox 


globafor,  202. 


Wallace,  A.  R.,  81. 

War,  the  Great,  i,  2,  188,  191,  192, 

*93- 

Ward,  James,  256,  258. 
Waterston,  Prof.  D.,  96. 
Will,  as  mind  in  action,  10,  243,  266 

267. 

Woman  as  inventor,  168-169. 
Woodruff,  Prof.  L.  L.,  17. 
Woodward,  Dr.  A.  Smith,  90  «,  93, 

96,  104  «,  109. 
World,   God  and   the,   8,    to,   chap. 

xii. 
Worms,  dividuality  in,  208,  209. 

Yerkes,  R.  M.,  239. 
Youtz,  Prof.  H.  A.,  328. 


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